THE  JOHN  CARTER  BROWN  LIBRARY 
H  A  HISTORY  • ; --"J*11: ;  - 


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THE  JOHN  CARTER  BROWN 
LIBRARY 


» 


THE 

JOHN  CARTER  BROWN 
LIBRARY 


A  HISTORY 

BY 

GEORGE  PARKER  WINSHIP 


PROVIDENCE 
1914 


B.  UPDIKE,  THE  MERRYMOUNT  PRESS,  BOSTON 


A  HISTORY 


THE  FAMILY 


THE  John  Carter  Brown  Library  has  a  his- 
tory that  goes  back  as  far  as  that  of  the 
University  to  which  it  now  belongs  and 
to  which  it  has  been  linked  for  a  hundred  and 
fifty  years  by  the  family  that  gave  its  name  to 
both.  Starting  as  a  family  library,  it  has  grown 
into  an  institution  for  historical  research,  widely 
known  among  scholars  as  an  unequalled  collection 
of  Americana.  The  handful  of  pamphlets  taken 
home  from  the  country  store  passed  from  mother 
to  son  and  grandson.  They  grew  in  number  with 
the  widening  interests  of  two  prosperous  mer- 
chants and  public-spirited  men  of  affairs.  The  next 
generation  bought  rare  books.  John  Carter  Brown, 
turning  his  hobby  toward  the  subjects  that  he  most 
enjoyed  reading  about,  became  a  collector  of  old 
books  on  America.  His  library  came  to  be  famous 
for  its  treasures  and  for  the  generosity  with  which 
he  allowed  scholars  to  use  it.  After  his  son's  death, 
it  passed  in  1 904  into  the  keeping  of  Brown  Uni- 
versity. There  it  is  a  lasting  memorial  to  the  col- 
lector and  a  permanent  endowment  for  American 
scholarship. 

The  copy  of  "The  Secretary's  Guide,  or,  Young 
Mans  Companion, "  printed  by  William  Bradford 

c  3  n 


JOHN  CARTER  BROWN  LIBRARY 

at  New  York  in  1728,  in  which  Nicholas  Brown, 
aged  eleven  years,  wrote  his  name  in  1740,  is  the 
earliest  of  the  family  possessions  now  in  the  col- 
lection. The  accumulation  of  a  library  cannot  fairly 
be  dated  from  this,  however,  nor  from  the  tract 
on  "The  Importance  of  the  British  Plantations  in 
America, "  in  which  his  signature  was  written  in 
1749. 

It  was  in  July,  1769,  when  the  contest  over 
the  location  of  Rhode  Island  College  was  at  its 
height,  that  Nicholas  Brown  "bot  at  Dotr.  Gibbs 
Vendue"  at  Newport  an  author's  presentation  copy 
of  Judge  Samuel  Sewall's  "Phenomena  quaedam 
Apocalyptica  Ad  Aspectum  Novi  Orbis  configu- 
rata,"  which  was  printed  at  Boston  in  1 727.  At  this 
auction  sale  he  also  secured  "A  brief  Account  of 
the  Revenues,  Pomp,  and  State  of  the  Bishops,  and 
other  Clergy  in  the  Church  of  England/'  printed 
at  the  same  place  two  years  earlier.  As  Nicholas 
Brown  owned  two  copies  of  the  Book  of  Common 
Prayer,  it  is  probable  that  a  keen  but  tolerant 
interest  in  matters  of  religious  concern,  rather 
than  any  feeling  inspired  by  controversial  dogma- 
tism, led  him  to  buy  these  books.  They  are  now 
treasured  by  the  Library  because  they  belong 
within  its  especial  field  of  collecting  as  well  as  for 
their  sentimental  value.  Since  1 769  there  have  been 

c  4  ] 


THE  FAMILY 

few  years  during  which  purchases  were  not  made 
at  book-auftions  for  the  Brown  family  library,  and 
scarcely  one  in  which  the  Library  records  do  not 
showthatsome  addition  was  made  to  the  collection. 

One  of  Nicholas  Brown 's  earliest  possessions  was 
a  copy  of  "The  English  Pilot.  The  Fourth  Book. 
Describing  The  West-India  Navigation,  from 
Hudson's-Bay  to  the  River  Amazones,"  which  was 
printed  at  London  in  1 745.  This  useful  volume  had 
belonged  to  his  seafaring  brother,  who  carried  it 
with  him  on  his  last  voyage.  On  the  final  fly  leaf  is 
found  the  record:  "York  in  Virginy, Febery  i5ye 
1 750-1 ,  Capt.  James  Brown  Died  half  a  Oure  Past 
6y2  at  Nite."  Captain  James  was  the  oldest  son  of 
James  Brown  of  Providence,  who  had  likewise 
followed  the  sea  in  his  younger  days.  The  elder 
Captain  James  Brown  sailed  on  one  of  the  little 
vessels  with  which  a  flourishing  trade  to  the  south- 
ward was  managed  by  Nicholas  Power,  whose 
daughter  Hope  he  married  in  1722.  Shortly  there- 
after he  left  the  sea  to  enter  the  business  of  keep- 
ing a  general  store.  Four  of  the  sons  of  James  and 
Hope  Brown  grew  up  to  become  the  famous  "  Four 
Brothers"  of  eighteenth-century  Providence. 

As  "Nicholas  Brown  and  Company"  the  four 
brothers  carried  on  the  family  business  after  1 762. 
They  had  diverse  interests,  however,  and  the  sen- 

1 5 1 


JOHN  CARTER  BROWN  LIBRARY 

ior  soon  came  to  be  the  only  aftive  partner.  Of  the 
others,  Joseph  devoted  himself  to  scientific  pur- 
suits, studying  architecture  and  astronomy.  The 
present  Transit  Street  marks  the  location  of  the 
telescope,  imported  for  the  occasion,  with  which  he 
made  observations  of  Venus  in  1 769.  At  the  time  of 
his  death  in  December,  1785,  he  occupied  the  chair 
of  Natural  Philosophy  in  Rhode  Island  College. 
John  and  Moses  devoted  themselves  to  their  in- 
dependent business  affairs,  and  to  politics.  Moses 
Brown  was  a  keen  judge  of  men  and  a  shrewd  in- 
vestor. The  establishment  of  the  first  cotton  mill  in 
Rhode  Island  was  due  to  his  confidence  and  cap- 
ital. He  endowed  the  Friends'  School  which  now 
perpetuates  his  name,  and  the  gift  of  his  life-long 
accumulation  of  papers  relating  to  the  history  of 
the  state  made  him  the  most  important  contribu- 
tor to  the  foundation  of  the  Rhode  Island  Histori- 
cal Society. 

Nicholas  Brown  and  his  brother  John,  in  more 
or  less  friendly  rivalry, came  to  be  the  leadingmer- 
chants  of  Providence.  One  or  the  other  served 
on  most  of  the  important  committees  appointed 
by  the  Town  Meeting  to  pave  the  streets,  build 
bridges,  and  raise  money  for  a  Market  House. 
When  the  recently  organized  Rhode  Island  Col- 
lege was  seeking  a  home,  Nicholas  and  John  Brown 

c 6  3 


THE  FAMILY 

secured  the  subscriptions,  while  their  brother  Mo- 
ses attended  to  the  legislative  negotiations  which 
brought  this  institution  of  learning  to  Providence. 
Nicholas  Brown  paid  the  bills  and  collected  the 
funds  for  building  the  original  edifice,  University 
Hall, on  the  hill  overlooking  his  home  on  the  Main 
Street.  Five  years  later,  in  1774,  when  the  Boston 
Port  Bill  threatened  the  mechanics  of  the  neigh- 
bouring city  with  starvation,  Nicholas  Brown  sent 
word  that  they  could  find  work  in  Providence.  He 
organized  a  lottery,  signing  the  tickets  with  his 
own  hand  and  taking  up  the  unsold  chances,  to 
raise  the  money  with  which  to  pay  the  Boston 
craftsmen  for  the  work  of  erecting  the  First  Bap- 
tist Meeting  House,  still  standing  "for  the  public 
worship  of  Almighty  God  and  to  hold  Commence- 
ment in." 

The  four  brothers,  with  their  friend  Stephen 
Hopkins,  were  leaders  in  the  group  which  in- 
duced the  first  Providence  printer  and  newspaper 
editor,  William  Goddard,  to  establish  himself  in 
their  town.  Goddard's  son  became  the  Professor  of 
Belles-Lettres  in  the  local  university,  and  married 
Nicholas  Brown's  granddaughter.  Through  herthe 
management  of  the  family  affairs  descended  to  the 
members  of  the  present  firm  of  Goddard  Brothers. 
William  Goddard's  business  was  acquired  by  a 

c  7  n 


JOHN  CARTER  BROWN  LIBRARY 

protege  of  Benjamin  Franklin,  John  Carter,  under 
whose  direction  the  Providence  "Gazette"  became 
one  of  the  most  influential  of  New  England  news- 
papers during  the  Revolution  and  the  subsequent 
years  of  political  and  economic  uncertainties.  Nich- 
olas Brown's  son  married  John  Carter's  daughter, 
and  their  youngest  son,  John  Carter  Brown,  col- 
lected what  was  for  many  years  the  most  widely 
known  American  private  library. 

The  second  Nicholas  Brown  was  born  in  1 769 
and  graduated  from  Rhode  Island  College  in  1 786. 
After  his  father's  death,  in  the  year  1 791 ,  he  began 
the  business  career  in  company  with  his  sister's 
husband,  Thomas  Poynton  Ives,  which  made  the 
name  of  Brown  &  Ives  respe6ted  wherever  there 
was  knowledge  of  American  commerce.  His  ear- 
liest purchase  of  a  book  now  in  the  Library  was 
made  in  1 792,  but  for  several  years  before  this  his 
ministerial  friends  had  been  in  the  habit  of  sending 
him  copies  of  their  printed  sermons  inscribed  with 
his  name,  which  are  valued  among  its  American 
imprints. 

His  conneftion  with  the  management  of  the 
College,  to  which  his  name  was  given  in  1804, 
began  when  he  succeeded  to  his  father's  place  as 
Trustee  in  1791.  He  was  elected  Treasurer  five 
years  later,  when  his  uncle,  John  Brown,  resigned 

C  8  D 


THE  FAMILY 

the  office  which  he  had  held  for  twenty-one  years. 
Nicholas  Brown  performed  the  duties  of  this  posi- 
tion until  1825,  when  he  turned  the  college  funds 
over  to  his  successor  and  nephew,  Moses  Brown 
Ives,  who  filled  the  office  for  the  ensuing  thirty- 
two  years.  He  built  Manning  Hall  to  house  the 
college  library,  whose  steady  growth  was  due 
largely  to  his  contributions.  The  former  Presi- 
dent's House,  with  its  site  on  which  the  John  Hay 
Library  now  stands,  was  also  given  to  the  College 
by  the  second  Nicholas  Brown.  He  shared  with  the 
children  of  his  sister,  for  whom  it  was  named, 
the  cost  of  building  Hope  College. 

The  third  Nicholas  Brown,  born  in  1 792,  began 
buying  old  American  books  in  his  twenties.  His 
brother,  John  Carter  Brown,  five  years  his  junior, 
possessed  himself  of  a  copy  of  Thomas  Hobs's 
"Behemoth;  or  an  Epitome  of  the  Civil  Wars/' 
printed  in  1 679, in  his  twelfth  year.  The  two  broth- 
ers were  predisposed  to  infection  with  the  epidemic 
Bibliomania  which  raged  in  England  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  nineteenth  century,  and  of  which  Dib- 
din  made  himself  the  historiographer.  The  elder, 
Nicholas,  became  interested  in  the  books  which 
were  sought  after  by  the  famous  collectors  of  that 
generation,  and  some  fifteenth-century  printing 
and  editions  of  the  classics  found  their  way  to  his 

it  9  3 


JOHN  CARTER  BROWN  LIBRARY 

shelves.  Europe  early  exerted  a  powerful  attrac- 
tion upon  him,  and  he  decided  to  make  his  home 
in  Rome,  where  he  was  for  a  time  the  American 
consul.  He  sold  his  Americana  to  his  brother,  who 
thereupon  committed  himself  to  the  task  of  col- 
lecting a  library  of  books  relating  to  the  western 
hemisphere. 


THE  COLLECTOR 

JOHN  Carter  Brown  bought  books  of  travel 
and  history  as  they  appeared  at  the  bookshops 
while  he  was  a  college  undergraduate.  The  reading 
of  these  led  him  back  to  the  older  works,  more  es- 
pecially to  such  as  contained  the  original  accounts 
of  the  settlement  of  New  England.  Among  the 
purchases  in  which  he  dated  his  signature  before 
he  was  thirty  were  a  copy  of"  Simplicities  Defence 
against  Seven-Headed  Policy/'  written  by  Samuel 
Gorton  of  Warwick  in  Rhode  Island,  and  printed 
in  1646;  the  1713  edition  of  Nathaniel  Ward's 
" Simple  Cobler  of  Aggawam  in  America and 
Thomas  Shepard's  "Theses  Sabbaticae"of  1649. 
In  most  of  these  early  acquisitions  Mr.  Brown 
noted  on  the  fly  leaves  the  references  to  his  native 
state.  He  marked  the  passages  that  especially  in- 
terested him,  and  controversial  remarks  animad- 
verting on  Roger  Williams  almost  always  called 
forth  some  succin6l  comment.  He  also  bought  at 
this  time  White  Kennet's  "  Bibliothecae  Americans 
Primordia,"  which  was  published  in  1713.  A  hun- 
dred years  later  this  "Attempt  Towards  laying  the 
Foundation  of  an  American  Library"  was  almost 
the  only  comprehensive  and  helpful  guide  for 
those  who  wished  to  find  the  original  narratives  of 

z » 1 


JOHN  CARTER  BROWN  LIBRARY 

the  discovery  and  exploration  of  the  New  World. 

For  a  score  of  years  John  Carter  Brown  was  one 
of  a  small  group  of  American  gentlemen  of  means 
who  found  in  the  London  and  Continental  book- 
shops a  reason  for  a  European  holiday.  Ameri- 
can books,  which  had  been  a  neglected  by-produCt 
with  the  dealers  who  were  searching  for  first  edi- 
tions of  the  classics  and  for  the  notable  productions 
of  the  "cradle  period"  of  printing,  gradually  be- 
came an  objeCt  of  attention.  Some  of  the  shops 
began  even  to  specialize  in  "  Americana." 

Obadiah  Rich  of  Boston,  who  was  the  Ameri- 
can consul  at  Valencia  in  1 8 1 5  and  later  at  Madrid , 
found  the  means  wherewith  to  accumulate  a  library 
for  himself  by  making  occasional  trips  to  London 
with  boxes  of  old  books.  There  he  met  most  of  the 
American  collectors  of  that  generation  and  aroused 
their  interest  in  the  records  of  the  early  Spanish 
voyagers  by  showing  them  what  he  had  to  sell. 
The  habit  of  trading  in  due  course  of  time  became 
stronger  than  the  passion  for  collecting,  and  in  1828 
Rich  established  himself  in  London  as  a  bookseller. 
Four  years  later  he  issued  a  catalogue  contain- 
ing a  chronological  list  of  books  about  America 
printed  between  1492  and  1700.  This  catalogue 
became  the  basis  for  Mr.  Brown's  collection,  as 
well  as  for  those  of  Peter  Force,  Colonel  Thomas 

l  12  n 


THE  COLLECTOR 

Aspinwall,  James  Carson  Brevoort,  Henry  C. 
Murphy,  and  James  Lenox.  Colonel  Aspinwall's 
books  were  bought  by  Samuel  Latham  Mitchill 
Barlow,  who  luckily  had  the  most  precious  of  them 
at  his  house  when  the  larger  part  was  burned  while 
in  storage,  in  1864.  The  Barlow  Library  was  dis- 
persed in  1890  by  auction,  as  Mr.  Murphy's  had 
been  six  years  earlier.  The  Force  collection  is  now 
in  the  Library  of  Congress,  and  the  Lenox  Li- 
brary has  been  absorbed  into  the  New  York  Pub- 
lic Library. 

This  earliest  group  of  American  collectors 
bought  the  books  printed  before  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, which  was  then  too  near  to  seem  important. 
Obadiah  Rich,  after  he  settled  in  London,  began  to 
realize  that  his  fellow-countrymen  would  soon  be 
searching  for  the  pamphlet  literature  of  the  French 
wars  and  for  that  of  the  American  Revolution. 
He  gathered  a  large  number  of  these  eighteenth- 
century  tracts,  and  in  1835  issued  a  "  Bibliotheca 
Americana  Nova,"  chronologically  arranged  for 
the  hundred  years  beginning  with  1701 .  Most  of 
Mr.  Brown's  contemporaries  refused  to  be  drawn 
into  this  later  period,  and  it  was  only  after  a  pro- 
longed consideration  that  he  made  his  decision  to 
buy  a  large  part  of  the  titles  on  Rich's  list.  His 
order  reached  London  too  late  to  secure  some  of 

c  13  3 


JOHN  CARTER  BROWN  LIBRARY 

the  things  he  wanted,  among  which  were  a  few  that 
have  not  since  come  upon  the  market.  Mr.  Brown 
secured,  however,  a  considerable  proportion  of 
Rich's  stock,  which  became  the  framework  for  the 
later  seftion  of  his  library. 

While  Obadiah  Rich  was  helping  his  American 
friends  to  fill  their  shelves  with  Latin  and  Spanish 
works,  a  Frenchman  had  been  quietly  amassing 
a  library  that  left  them  all  far  behind.  Like  most 
successful  collectors,  he  was  a  modest,  unobtrusive 
student,  who  worked  with  his  books.  He  gathered 
information  as  well  as  books  and  manuscripts,  and 
in  1 837  published  the  results  of  his  collecting  under 
the  title  of"  Bibliotheque  Americaine  ou  Catalogue 
des  Ouvrages  relatifs  a  FAmerique  qui  ont  paru 
jusqu'a  Tan  1 700  par  H.  Ternaux."  He  also  trans- 
lated many  of  the  contemporary  narratives  of  the 
exploration  of  the  western  hemisphere,  and  sup- 
plemented his  list  of  the  printed  books  by  a  se- 
ries of  nineteen  volumes,  issued  between  1837  and 
1840,  of  "Voyages,  Relations  et  Memoires  origi- 
naux  pour  servir  a  Fhistoire  de  la  decouverte  de 
FAmerique  publies  par  H.  Ternaux-Compans." 
The  original  manuscripts  from  which  these  trans- 
lations were  made,  like  the  books  described  in  his 
catalogue,  were  nearly  if  not  quite  all  in  the  edi- 
tor's own  library. 

[  14  n 


THE  COLLECTOR 

The  Ternaux  Catalogue  established  a  new  goal 
for  Mr.  Brown  and  Mr.  Lenox,  as  well  as  for  their 
rivals  who  were  already  beginning  to  drop  behind 
in  the  race.  The  two  leaders  each  secured  a  copy 
of  the  book,  which  was  printed  on  large  paper,  and 
had  it  interleaved.  These  copies  served  for  many 
years  as  the  working  catalogues  of  their  libra- 
ries. "  Not  in  Ternaux"  became  the  note  by  which 
Mr.  Brown  designated  a  title  which  he  wanted 
when  he  read  an  auction  sale  catalogue  or  a  book- 
seller's list. 

In  1841,  upon  his  father's  death,  John  Carter 
Brown  came  into  possession  of  the  active  family 
interests,  including  the  family  library.  The  time 
was  opportune,  and  the  book-buying  which  had 
been  an  occasional  diversion  soon  became  a  per- 
sistent and  absorbing  passion.  Two  circumstances 
combined  to  give  a  fresh  impetus  to  the  collecting 
of  Americana,  upon  which  he  had  embarked  fif- 
teen years  before.  In  1841  John  Russell  Bartlett 
opened  a  bookshop  in  New  York.  In  1843  Henry 
Stevens  of  Vermont  graduated  from  Yale  Col- 
lege and  determined  to  pay  his  way  through  the 
Harvard  Law  School  by  trading  in  old  books. 
Mr.  Bartlett,  who  had  received  his  business  train- 
ing with  Cyrus  Butler,  a  name  of  some  note  in 
Providence,  had  as  a  partner  Charles  Welford. 

1 15  n 


JOHN  CARTER  BROWN  LIBRARY 

The  firm  of  Bartlett  &  Welford  was  short-lived, 
but  a  friendship  was  formed  in  their  store  which 
identified  Mr.  Bartlett  with  the  John  Carter  Brown 
Library  more  and  more  intimately  for  the  rest  of 
his  life.  To  Henry  Stevens  was  direftly  due  the 
preeminent  position  which  Mr.  Brown's  library 
secured  before  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury. 

Henry  Stevens  became  acquainted  with  old  books 
in  the  library  of  his  father,  who  was  the  founder 
of  the  Vermont  Historical  Society,  and  he  devel- 
oped an  instincl  for  finding  them  while  wandering 
through  New  England.  During  his  travels,  he  met 
John  Carter  Brown.  No  records  have  been  found 
of  the  earliest  trading  between  the  young  law  stu- 
dent and  the  Providence  merchant,  but  when,  in 
1845,  Stevens  decided  to  abandon  the  law  and  carry 
his  talent  for  picking  up  rare  books  to  Europe,  he 
took  with  him  a  very  clear  idea  of  what  Mr.  Brown 
wanted.  It  is  probable  that  the  understanding 
between  them  was  definite,  and  that  Stevens  was 
encouraged  to  go  abroad  in  order  to  buy  books 
for  his  Providence  client.  The  venture  was  most 
successful,  and  John  Carter  Brown  received  from 
Stevens  during  the  next  two  years  over  fifteen 
hundred  titles  for  his  collection.  Nearly  all  of  these, 
like  many  which  Mr.  Lenox  secured  at  about  the 

C  16  ] 


THE  COLLECTOR 

same  time,  are  in  bindings  on  which  are  stamped 
the  initials,  H.  T.  beneath  a  ram's  head  crest,  of 
Henri  Ternaux-Compans.  It  seems  likely  that  the 
prospe6t  of  purchasing  the  Ternaux  books  for 
Mr.  Brown  had  much  to  do  with  the  transfer  of 
Mr.  Stevens's  energies  to  the  European  field. 

The  Library  archives  contain  six  of  the  seven 
invoices  on  which  were  listed  the  books  sent  from 
London  to  Providence  in  1 846  and  1 847.  The  miss- 
ing one  can  be  reconstructed  very  largely  by  an 
examination  of  the  volumes  in  which  Stevens's  neat 
figures  are  to  be  seen  on  the  lower  inside  corner  of 
the  leaf  facing  the  title-page.  The  first  of  these  in- 
voices begins  with  the  "  Ymago  Mundi"  of  Pierre 
d'Ailly,  printed  about  1485,  in  which  Columbus 
found  some  of  his  inspiration.  This  is  followed  by 
three  editions  of  the  "  Columbus  Letter"  printed 
at  Rome  and  Paris  in  1493,  the  three  amounting 
to  thirty-eight  pounds;  a  Vespuccius  "Mundus 
Novus,"  priced  at  four  pounds  ten  shillings;  five 
editions  of  the  letters  in  which  Cortes  reported  to 
the  Spanish  monarch  his  exploits  in  Mexico,  the 
most  expensive  of  them  entered  at  nine  guineas; 
and  an  assortment  of  other  "nuggets,"  as  Stevens 
was  wont  to  call  them.  The  names  of  Peter  Mar- 
tyr; Hakluyt,  whose  "Virginia  richly  valued"  of 
1609  was  priced  at  two  guineas;  John  Smith; 

c  17  n 


JOHN  CARTER  BROWN  LIBRARY 

Lescarbot;  Champlain,  whose  "Voyages"  in  the 
1613  edition  was  marked  two  pounds  without  the 
shillings;  John  Cotton;  Richard  Mather;  Hugo 
Grotius;  Walter  Raleigh;  Edward  Winslow; 
John  Eliot,  whose  Indian  Tracts  were  entered  at 
one  pound  ten  shillings  or  less ;  Hennepin ;  Anne 
Bradstreet;  and  Mary  Rowlandson  will  suggest 
how  solid  was  the  structure  of  the  Library  which 
was  then  established. 

Mr.  Brown  already  owned  a  number  of  the  Jesuit 
"Relations"  in  which  the  Fathers  of  the  Order 
published  the  reports  of  their  missionary  labours 
in  Canada  between  1632  and  1672.  TheTernaux 
set  of  these  "Relations"  added  twenty-six  editions 
to  his  collection.  He  had  likewise  made  a  begin- 
ning in  earlier  years  with  the  series  of  illustrated 
narratives  of  voyages  which  were  brought  out  by 
Levinus  Hulsius  at  Nuremberg  between  1598  and 
1663,  and  by  Theodore  De  Bry  and  his  successors 
at  Frankfort  from  1590  to  1644.  Mr.  Brown  tried 
to  resist  temptation,  writing  in  December,  1848, 
that  he  "should  hardly  be  willing  at  present,  in 
these  dull  times,  to  launch  into  the  Ocean  of  de 
Bry."  A  few  months  later  he  reconsidered  this 
resolution  and  gave  the  order  to  secure  what  he 
lacked  to  make  these  sets  complete.  Stevens  set 
himself  to  the  task,  which  occupied  him  at  inter- 

n  is  n 


THE  COLLECTOR 

vals  throughout  the  rest  of  his  life,  and  his  grand- 
son after  him. 

John  Carter  Brown  stole  a  long  march  on  all 
his  rivals  by  the  purchase  of  the  Ternaux  books. 
The  only  one  who  refused  to  recognize  his  lead 
was  his  Newport  summer  neighbour  and  friend, 
James  Lenox  of  New  York.  The  story  of  the  fight 
between  these  two  great  collectors  has  been  told  in 
part  in  Mr.  Stevens's  entertaining  "  Recollections 
of  Mr.  James  Lenox,"  published  in  1886.  Each 
recognized  that  Stevens  held  the  key  to  their  ulti- 
mate vi6tory,  and  the  latter  found  the  problem 
of  satisfying  both  of  them  at  times  quite  impossi- 
ble of  solution.  All  three  made  many  skilful  turns, 
and  some  mistakes,  and  each  did  each  of  the  others 
great  service.  It  was  a  fair  and  a  friendly  fight  to 
the  end  between  the  two  rivals.  Mr.  Lenox,  who 
never  married,  overtook  his  competitor, made  care- 
less by  early  good  fortune.  When  at  his  death  the 
Lenox  Library  became  the  property  of  the  public 
in  the  beautiful  building  which  he  had  erefted  as 
a  permanent  home  for  his  books,  this  was  the 
finest  American  library. 

John  Carter  Brown  started  to  follow  Mr.  Lenox 
in  the  quest  for  old  Bibles,  but  he  gave  up  the 
attempt  to  become  interested  in  these.  He  wrote 
Mr.  Bartlett  in  Oftober,  1846,  that  "My  Bibles 

[  19  ] 


JOHN  CARTER  BROWN  LIBRARY 

stand  quietly  on  their  shelves,  as  they  have  done 
for  ages  past  &  gone,  nobody  troubles  them."  He 
was  also  tempted  by  the  a6livity  of  otherbuyers,and 
by  a  clerical  trader  in  old  books  whom  he  was  glad 
to  help,  into  adding  to  his  collection  of  Aldines. 
The  fa6t  that  some  forty  of  these  had  long  been 
boxed  in  his  stable,  however,  led  him  to  decide 
that  "I  shall  not  probably  buy  many  more,  as  I 
have  already  so  large  a  stock  on  hand.  Mine  came 
principally  from  the  Duke  of  Sussex'  Library, 
which  I  think  gives  them  an  additional  value, 
having  been  collated  by  his  learned  Librarian." 

The  Library  now  contains  three  hundred  speci- 
mens of  the  work  of  Aldus  Manutius  of  Venice, 
his  successors  and  imitators.  It  is  an  excellent  repre- 
sentative collection,  but  nowise  distinguished.  The 
principal  Bibles  in  the  collection  are  the  five  great 
polyglot  editions:  the  Complutensian,  published  at 
the  expense  of  Cardinal  Ximenes  in  1514-1 7 ;  the 
Plantin  of  1 569-73,  which  the  publisher  supposed 
that  Philip  the  Second  had  promised  to  pay  for; 
Hutter's  incomplete  Nuremberg  edition  of  1 599 ; 
the  Paris  edition  of  1628-45 ;  and  Bryan  Walton's 
work  published  at  London  in  1657,  with  the  ori- 
ginal leaf  containing  the  tribute  to  the  Lord  Pro- 
tector Cromwell,  for  which  two  others  were  substi- 
tuted five  years  later,  praising  the  incoming  King, 

c 20  ] 


THE  COLLECTOR 

Charles  II.  There  is  also  a  Bible  printed  at  Venice 
in  1494,  which  was  given  to  John  Carter  Brown 
by  his  brother  in  1851,  and  a  Nuremberg  1523 
edition  with  an  inscription  to  the  Duke  of  Sussex 
from  the  Prince  of  Capua,  dated  1840.  Prince  Eu- 
genes vellum  copy  of  the  1462  edition,  printed  at 
Mainz  by  Fust  and  Schoeffer,was  added  to  the  col- 
lection at  the  Syston  Park  sale  in  1884,  by  Harold 
Brown. 

Stevens, meanwhile,  stayed  in  London,"  as  quick 
on  the  trigger  after  an  American  Book  as  a  cat  is 
after  a  mouse,"  as  Mr.  Brown  wrote  in  the  spring 
of  1849.  He  knew  the  books  that  his  correspond- 
ents wanted,  and  he  also  understood  how  to  satisfy 
the  standards  by  which  they  judged  the  copies 
which  pleased  them  as  bibliophiles.  Few  of  the  col- 
lectors of  that  generation  knew  how  to  recognize 
the  possibilities  of  the  trash  that  came  out  of  coun- 
try shops  and  negleCted  store-rooms.  When  other 
agents  and  the  established  booksellers,  who  were 
used  to  handling  fifteenth-century  folios, tried  their 
hand  at  the  game  of  Americana,  the  results  were 
almost  always  discouraging  to  all  concerned.  The 
supply  of  satisfactory  copies  of  desirable  books 
seems  to  have  been  then,  as  at  all  other  times  be- 
fore and  since,  a  little  less  than  the  demand  from 
contemporary  collectors  with  a  fastidious  taste 

c  21  n 


JOHN  CARTER  BROWN  LIBRARY 

and  the  means  to  gratify  it.  The  result  has  been  a 
constant  advance  in  prices.  This  was  a  persistent 
source  of  annoyance  to  Mr.  Brown,  and  of  reso- 
lutions to  abandon  the  chase,  resolutions  which 
were  bravely  broken  when  the  temptations  were 
renewed.  # 

The  steady  rise  in  the  prices  at  which  old  Amer- 
ican books  sold,  from  the  dealers'  catalogues  as 
well  as  at  auction,  caused  John  Carter  Brown  much 
anxiety.  His  hobby  had  become  popular,  and  many 
of  his  rivals  were  men  of  large  means  or  of  few 
other  interests.  In  January,  1847,  he  wrote  to  Mr. 
Bartlett  that  "So  many  people  of  late  have  gone 
crazy  on  the  subject  of 'American  Books'  &  prices 
have  ruled  so  high  at  the  Sales  in  Boston  &  N  Yk: 
that  I  am  strongly  tempted  'to  submit'  my  own 
Collection  'to  public  competition'  as  the  London 
Auction^  phrase  it.  Whose  Books  are  these  that 
are  to  be  sold  Tuesday  ? "  Soon  after  this  he  wrote : 
"Another  Sale  of  American  Books.  One  would  al- 
most suppose  the  whole  world  had  been  ransacked 
for  American  Books,  they  seem  to  be  brought  for- 
ward so  rapidly.  Whence  come  these  that  are  now 
offered  for  sale?" 

A  few  years  later  John  Carter  Brown  was  again 
disturbed  by  the  idea  of  selling  his  books.  An  enter- 
prising and  persistent  dealer  approached  him  with 


THE  COLLECTOR 

the  proposal,  offering  #50,000  for  his  whole  col- 
lection. Fortunately,  at  the  then  ruling  prices,  this 
seemed  to  the  owner  less  than  the  books  were 
likely  to  fetch  if  offered  for  sale  in  the  open  mar- 
ket. He  withstood  the  temptation,  although  with 
many  misgivings  lest  they  might  never  again 
be  worth  as  much  as  at  that  period  of  seemingly 
inflated  values. 

The  middle  decades  of  the  nineteenth  century 
offered  many  opportunities  for  a  courageous  col- 
lector of  Americana.  Not  all  of  these  were  taken. 
The  list  of  the  books  which  John  Carter  Brown 
lost  because  his  bids  were  just  under  the  success- 
ful ones,  or  which  he  declined  because  the  book- 
sellers' prices  seemed  to  him  high,  is  a  long  one. 
It  contains  many  titles  at  the  sight  of  which  the 
librarian  sighs  enviously  half  a  century  later,  or 
regretfully  when,  as  happens  from  time  to  time, 
the  stone  rejected  by  the  builder  is  finally  put  in 
its  place,  brought  home  at  a  price  which  would 
once  have  bought  a  score  like  it.  But  the  mistakes 
are  easily  forgiven  as  one  goes  over  the  much 
longer  lists  of  books  that  were  bought. 

The  catalogues  of  Asher  of  Berlin,  Weigel  of 
Leipzig,  Muller  of  Amsterdam,  and  Tross  of  Paris 
yielded  many  a  parcel  of  old  books  which  year  by 
year  helped  to  round  out  the  collection.  The  auc- 

C  23  ] 


JOHN  CARTER  BROWN  LIBRARY 

tion  sales  contributed  their  quota.  Despite  his  fre- 
quently expressed  irritation  at  the  shortcomings  of 
printed  descriptions,  and  his  determination  never 
again  to  buy  a  book  until  he  had  examined  it, 
John  Carter  Brown  let  pass  few  of  the  sales  which 
contained  important  American  items.  In  1859  he 
secured  from  the  George  R.  Haze  well  sale  in 
New  York  over  fifty  of  the  Revolutionary  trails 
which  had  once  formed  a  part  of  the  library  of  the 
Reverend  Thomas  Bradbury  Chandler,  himself 
an  aftive  participant  in  that  wordy  warfare.  The 
book-plates  in  another  large  lot  recall  the  tragedy 
of  Maximilian,  Emperor  of  Mexico,  whose  books 
were  distributed  at  the  Abbe  Fischer  and  the  An- 
drade  sales,  and  reappeared  in  the  ensuing  book- 
sellers' offerings. 

The  Henri  Ternaux  volumes  secured  in  1846 
and  1 847  probably  very  nearly  doubled  the  size  of 
John  Carter  Brown's  collection.  It  doubled  again 
during  the  ensuing  fifteen  years.  Toward  the  end  of 
this  period,  the  question  of  where  to  find  shelf  room 
for  the  contents  of  each  incoming  parcel  became 
more  and  more  perplexing.  To  the  bachelor  bibli- 
ophile of  fifty  the  problem  was  perhaps  one  of  the 
minor  pleasures  which  he  derived  from  the  hours 
spent  with  his  books.  A  further  complication  en- 
sued when,  in  1859,  to  the  frank  astonishment  of 

I  24  ] 


THE  COLLECTOR 

his  correspondents  and  the  consternation  of  some 
in  the  old  book  trade,  Mr.  Brown  married.  Hap- 
pily, the  fears  of  those  who  had  foreseen  the  Li- 
brary disappearing  from  its  paramount  position 
among  his  interests  were  unnecessary.  His  bride, 
Sophia  Augusta  Brown,  the  daughter  of  the  Hon. 
Patrick  Brown  of  New  Providence  in  the  Baha- 
mas, yielded  at  once  to  the  charm  which  the  books 
exerted.  Nevertheless,  she  declined  to  give  up  her 
home  to  them. 

John  Carter  Brown's  earlier  purchases  were 
placed  upon  the  shelves  of  two  old  mahogany 
cases  with  sliding  doors,  which  lined  the  upper 
hallway  of  his  residence  at  No.  357  Benefit  Street 
in  Providence.  In  these  cases  he  continued  to 
find  room  for  his  more  precious  treasures,  some 
of  which  have  never  been  shelved  elsewhere 
since  they  came  into  his  possession.  His  "Biblio- 
theca  Americana/'  however,  long  before  his  mar- 
riage, had  overflowed  from  the  upstairs  hallway. 
Books  were  to  be  found  wherever  there  was 
room  for  a  press  or  for  shelves,  and  unopened 
boxes  remained  in  the  store-room  over  the  coach 
house. 

This  state  of  affairs  nowise  pleased  the  most 
excellent  housewife  who  had  become  the  mistress 
of  Mr.  Brown's  home.  She  very  soon  convinced 

c  25  3 


JOHN  CARTER  BROWN  LIBRARY 

her  husband  that  his  books  were  far  too  valuable 
a  possession  to  remain  scattered  about  in  a  wooden 
dwelling,  exposed  to  the  danger  of  fire.  Mr.  Brown 
recognized  the  danger,  as  well  as  the  underlying 
reasons  for  her  anxiety.  In  the  spring  of  1862  he 
constructed  a  library  room,  adjoining  the  north- 
east corner  of  his  residence,  which  was  intended  to 
be  fireproof  according  to  the  accepted  standards  of 
that  time. 

In  this  room,  its  walls  lined  with  books  to  the 
ceiling,  John  Carter  Brown  was  accustomed  to 
pass  much  of  his  time.  Every  Saturday  afternoon 
when  he  was  in  Providence  was  specifically  re- 
served for  the  Library  and  its  affairs.  When  this 
room  was  deserted  for  the  building  erefhed  in 
1904,  the  library  table,  on  which  every  purchase 
had  been  examined  for  over  forty  years,  accom- 
panied the  books  to  their  new  home.  There  it  con- 
tinues to  be  the  first  resting-place  of  each  volume 
that  is  added  to  the  collection.  The  old  table  with 
its  inkstand,  the  movable  cases,  the  chairs,  and  the 
rug  with  which  John  Carter  Brown  furnished  his 
library  room,  remain  together.  They  help  to  main- 
tain the  traditions  of  a  gentleman's  library,  which 
were  in  danger  of  being  lost  in  the  transfer  to  a 
separate  building  and  the  distractions  of  a  public 
institution.  It  is  a  pleasant  sentiment,  not  without 

C  26  3 


THE  COLLECTOR 

value  for  the  future,  which  places  each  addition  to 
the  collection  before  the  chair  in  which  John  Carter 
Brown  was  accustomed  to  sit  when  he  looked  at 
his  books. 


C  27  3 


THE  CATALOGUE 


THE  Astor  House  bookshop  of  Bartlett&  Wel- 
ford  was  in  1841  the  intellectual  centre  of 
New  York.  The  firm  began  business  with  an  invoice 
from  London,  which  included  a  good  many  out- 
of-print  books  and  some  first-class  rarities.  John 
Carter  Brown  was  only  one  of  many  who  found 
that  the  store  was  an  attraction  drawing  book-lov- 
ing people  to  New  York.  Mr.  Bartlett  had  an  un- 
usual faculty  for  making  and  keeping  friends  who 
were  worth  knowing.  They  gathered  before  his 
shelves  after  business  hours,  and  those  who  resided 
at  a  distance  made  his  office  their  headquarters  in 
the  city.  A  regular  and  informing  correspondent, 
he  carefully  preserved  the  letters  that  came  to  him 
and  arranged  them  in  volumes.  The  index  to  these 
volumes,  which  were  given  to  the  Library  by  his 
grandson  in  1914,  will  contain  most  of  the  remem- 
bered names  of  nineteenth-century  American  his- 
torical students  and  book-lovers.  To  many  of  these 
his  friendship  with  Mr.  Brown  proved  useful. 

The  fame  of  the  Brown  collection  had  spread 
widely,  and  it  was  known  to  be  the  place  where 
a  rare  book  about  early  America  was  most  likely 
to  be  found.  Albert  Gallatin,  Sir  Arthur  Helps, 
Francis  Parkman,  Dr.  E.  B.  O'Callaghan,  Evert 

1 29  3 


JOHN  CARTER  BROWN  LIBRARY 

A.  Duyckinck,  Samuel  G.  Drake,  Charles  Deane, 
and  a  score  of  others  bore  testimony  in  prefaces  and 
footnotes  to  the  generosity  with  which  Mr.  Brown 
made  his  choicest  treasures  available  for  their  use. 
Some  of  them  may  also  have  suspefted  the  misgiv- 
ings with  which  he  awaited  the  return  of  the  vol- 
umes. In  his  letters  to  Mr.  Bartlett,  through  whom 
most  of  these  loans  were  suggested,  the  owner 
frequently  expressed  his  anxiety,  and  commented 
on  the  long  time  that  was  sometimes  taken  to  read 
a  very  small  book. 

The  bookshop  under  the  Astor  House  must 
have  been  a  delightful  place  for  a  literary  rendez- 
vous, but  the  profits  of  the  business  were  not  suf- 
ficient to  maintain  two  growing  families.  In  1849 
John  Russell  Bartlett  withdrew  from  the  firm.  The 
business  continued,  under  the  name  of  Scribner  & 
Welford,  later  becoming  Charles  Scribner's  Sons. 
Mr.  Bartlett  secured  an  appointment  as  Commis- 
sioner for  the  survey  of  the  international  boundary 
between  the  United  States  and  Mexico.  After  his 
return  from  the  exploring  expedition  which  this 
entailed,  he  was  elected  in  1855  Secretary  of  State 
for  Rhode  Island.  This  position  he  occupied  until 
1872. 

During  the  years  of  his  service  as  Secretary  of 
State,  Mr.  Bartlett  found  time  for  a  large  amount 

[  30  3 


THE  CATALOGUE 

of  literary  and  historical  work.  He  enlarged  his 
"  Dictionary  of  Americanisms  ;"indexed  theRhode 
Island  Session  Laws ;  edited  the  Rhode  Island  Rec- 
ords from  1 636  to  1 792 ;  published  a  volume  of  bio- 
graphical sketches  of  Rhode  Island  officers  who 
served  in  the  Civil  War ;  and  compiled  a  bibliogra- 
phy of  "The  Literature  of  the  Rebellion."  Among 
his  fellow-workers  in  the  United  States  and  abroad 
he  acquired  a  considerable  reputation  as  an  histori- 
cal scholar  and  an  authority  upon  themanysubjefts 
to  which  he  gave  his  attention.  Throughout  these 
years  he  also  maintained  his  correspondence  with 
those  who  shared  his  interest  in  ethnology  and  an- 
thropology, contemporary  as  well  as  early  Ameri- 
can history,  Arctic  exploration,  and  the  never-fail- 
ing subject  of  old  books. 

After  Mr.  Bartlett  settled  in  Providence,  John 
Carter  Brown  came  to  rely  upon  him  more  and 
more  for  advice  and  assistance  in  building  up  his 
Library.  His  acquaintance  with  the  routine  of  the 
book  trade  made  it  easy  for  him  to  negotiate  many 
of  Mr.  Brown's  orders,  as  well  as  those  of  the  other 
collectors  who  made  Providence  known  as  the 
home  of  bibliophiles.  Many  of  the  choicest  treas- 
ures which  were  acquired  by  Caleb  Fiske  Harris, 
who  was  then  gathering  the  collection  of  Ameri- 
can Poetry  which  was  afterwards  given  to  Brown 

c  31  3 


JOHN  CARTER  BROWN  LIBRARY 

University  by  Mr.  Bartlett's  brother-in-law,  Sena- 
tor Henry  B.  Anthony, were  secured  through  John 
Russell  Bartlett's  agency.  He  was  equally  helpful 
to  Royal  C.  Taft,  Alexander  Farnum,and  Joseph 
J.  Cooke.  Mr.  Brown  also  found  in  Mr.  Bartlett  a 
sympathetic  gossip,  who  was  always  ready  to  en- 
courage him  and  to  furnish  reasons  for  making  an 
addition  to  the  collection. 

The  fame  of  the  Library  led  to  a  steadily  in- 
creasing number  of  requests  for  information  con- 
cerning its  contents.  Mr.  Brown  decided  to  meet 
this  demand  by  printing  a  catalogue  of  his  books. 
An  additional  reason  for  doing  this  was  the  diffi- 
culty of  keeping  his  own  lists  so  that  he  could  tell 
what  he  possessed,  and  of  finding  places  for  the 
record  of  his  purchases.  The  interleaved  copy  of 
Rich's  " Bibliotheca  Americana  Nova"  had  been 
crowded  out  of  its  bindings  by  the  insertion  of  ad- 
ditional leaves,  and  there  was  scarcely  room  any- 
where in  the  Ternaux  Catalogue  for  further  titles. 

John  Russell  Bartlett  was  largely  responsible 
for  the  details  of  the  plan  for  the  printed  cata- 
logue. He  proposed  to  give  a  transcript  of  each 
title-page  or  colophon,  with  translations  of  those  in 
foreign  languages,  exaft  bibliographical  descrip- 
tions of  the  volumes,  biographical  and  historical 
notes  with  critical  estimates  of  the  value  of  the  dif- 

[  32  ] 


THE  CATALOGUE 

ferent  works, and  lists  of  all  the  known  editions  and 
translations.  The  plan  was  in  almost  every  respeft 
far  ahead  of  anything  in  this  field  that  had  been 
undertaken  up  to  that  time,  and  it  has  not  since 
been  improved  upon  in  any  essential  particular. 
The  execution  left  much  to  be  desired,  but  it  was 
not  until  the  year  1907  that  it  was  supplanted 
as  the  best  reference  catalogue  of  Americana  by 
a  completed  better  work.  This  is  the  altogether 
satisfactory  "  Catalogue  of  Books  relating  to  the 
Discovery  and  Early  History  of  North  and  South 
America  forming  part  of  the  Library  of  E.  D. 
Church/'  prepared  by  Miss  Henrietta  Bartlett 
under  the  direction  of  Luther  S.  Livingston,  and 
edited  by  George  Watson  Cole. 

The  first  volume  of  the  John  Carter  Brown  Cat- 
alogue was  issued  in  1 865,  the  second  a  year  later, 
and  in  1870  appeared  the  two  volumes  which  con- 
tain the  4173  eighteenth-century  titles.  The  first 
contained  302  entries  dated  before  the  year  1601, 
and  the  second  1160  dating  from  1601  to  1700. 
A  supplement  to  the  seventeenth-century  volume, 
pages  251-261 , printed  separately,  gives  a  descrip- 
tion of  the  set  of  Thevenot's  "Relations  de  Divers 
Voyages  Curieux."  New  editions  of  the  first  and 
second  volumes  were  published  in  1875  and  1882. 

An  erudite  German  physician,  Dr.  Carl  Hermann 
C  S3  H 


JOHN  CARTER  BROWN  LIBRARY 

Berendt,  assisted  Mr.  Bartlett  in  the  work  of  com- 
piling the  material  for  the  first  and  second  volumes 
of  the  Catalogue.  Dr.  Berendt,  during  a  residence 
in  Spanish  America,  had  acquired  a  familiarity  with 
the  Maya  and  other  native  languages  of  Central 
America  and  Mexico.  He  also  possessed  a  number 
of  rare  works  dealing  with  those  languages, includ- 
ing an  important  seventeenth-century  manuscript 
dictionary  of  the  Motul  dialeft  of  Yucatan,  which 
Mr.  Brown  secured  for  the  Library.  Neither  Dr. 
Berendt  nor  Mr.  Bartlett  was  able  to  attain  the  high 
standard  of  accuracy  which  they  had  set  themselves, 
in  all  the  details  of  preparing  the  manuscript  of  the 
Catalogue  for  the  printer.  In  addition  to  the  lapses 
from  exactness  which  are  difficult  to  avoid  in  any 
extended  bibliographical  work,thenotes  in  the  first 
two  volumes  show  occasional  traces  of  the  foreign- 
er's misconceptions  regarding  the  precise  meaning 
of  some  English  words. 

These  faults  attracted  attention, and  Mr.  Brown 
promptly  destroyed  most  of  the  copies  and  prepared 
to  reprint  the  catalogue  in  a  form  more  worthy 
of  the  prestige  of  his  collection.  An  additional  rea- 
son for  doing  this  was  that  he  had  already  secured 
enough  additional  titles  to  justify  a  second  edition. 
Despite  all  his  precautions,  two  or  three  copies 
of  the  Catalogue  had  reached  the  hands  of  alert 

C  34  ] 


THE  CATALOGUE 

booksellers,  who  were  able  to  offer  him  important 
rarities  not  described  on  its  pages.  The  prices  at 
which  these  offerings  were  made,  and  the  ominous 
phrase,  "Not  in  the  John  Carter  Brown  Cata- 
logue," which  occasionally  greeted  him  on  the 
pages  of  auction  catalogues,  gave  the  owner  of  the 
Library  varied  feelings  regarding  the  cost  at  which 
he  had  added  so  considerably  to  the  fame  of  his 
collection. 

The  new  edition  of  the  first  volume  of  the  Cata- 
logue was  nearly  ready  for  the  printer  when  John 
Carter  Brown  died,  on  June  10, 18 74.  The  owner- 
ship of  the  books  passed  to  Mrs.  Brown,  and  she  at 
once  gave  directions  that  the  work  should  be  com- 
pleted as  her  husband  had  planned.  She  felt  that  the 
catalogue  of  the  books  with  which  he  had  passed 
so  large  a  part  of  his  life  was  to  be  his  most  last- 
ing monument.  It  established  his  position  as  a  great 
benefactor  of  American  historical  scholarship.  Mrs. 
Brown  determined  to  make  it  representative  of  his 
notable  achievement  and  his  high  ideals. 

The  first  volume  of  the  new  edition  was  issued 
in  1875.  It  is  a  handsome  volume  of  526  pages, 
containing  six  hundred  entries  dated  from  1482  to 
1600.  The  transcripts  of  titles  and  colophons  are 
supplemented  by  47  facsimile  plates,  reproducing 
when  necessary  the  red  and  black  of  the  original 

[  35  u 


JOHN  CARTER  BROWN  LIBRARY 

printing,  and  74  cuts  of  vignettes,  maps,  and  por- 
traits. The  frontispiece  is  a  lithographed  reproduc- 
tion of  the  painted  initial  at  the  beginning  of  the 
1482  edition  of  Ptolemy's  "  Cosmographia."  This 
was  made  in  Paris  by  Pilinski  from  the  example  of 
the  book  on  vellum  in  the  Bibliotheque  Nationale. 
It  is  quite  different  in  colouring  and  treatment  from 
the  copy  then  in  the  Library  or  either  of  the  variant 
issues  which  have  since  been  acquired. 

The  notes  in  the  new  Catalogue  are  much  longer 
than  those  in  the  previous  edition.  They  give  an 
analysis  of  the  contents  of  many  of  the  larger  vol- 
umes which  are  described,  and  explain  the  Ameri- 
can interest  of  those  works  whose  titles  do  not  sug- 
gest their  intrinsic  importance.  The  entry  of  the 
earliest  Mexican  imprint  then  in  the  Library  is  fol- 
lowed by  a  sketch  of  the  history  of  the  introduction 
of  printing  into  the  New  World.  This  is  supple- 
mented by  a  list  of  sixteenth-century  Mexican  and 
Peruvian  publications.  Fourteen  pages  are  devoted 
to  the  contents  of  Hakluyt's "  Voyages/'  36  to  the 
collection  of  Hulsius,and  94 to  that  of  DeBry.  This 
last  se6lion  was  reprinted  as  a  separate  publication. 

The  regular  edition  of  this  volume  consisted  of 
one  hundred  copies.  Seventy  additional  copies  were 
printed  with  a  different  title-page,  reading,  "  Bibli- 
ographical Notices  of  Rare  and  Curious  Books  re- 

C  36  j 


THE  CATALOGUE 

lating  to  America  printed  in  the  XVth  and  XVIth 
Centuries  in  the  Library  of  the  late  John  Carter 
Brown/'  These  copies  are  on  a  better  paper  than 
the  others,  and  were  designed  to  be  used  as  gifts 
to  persons  whose  interest  in  the  volume  was  per- 
sonal rather  than  bibliographical,  and  who  would 
not  care  to  possess  the  complete  work. 

The  new  second  part  of  the  Catalogue  was  ready 
in  1882.  It  is  a  volume  of  647  pages,  with  author, 
place,  and  subject  indexes,  and  14  facsimile  plates, 
in  addition  to  the  vignettes  and  printer's  devices 
reproduced  for  use  with  type-copies  of  other  titles 
in  the  text.  There  are  1642  entries  of  seventeenth- 
century  titles.  The  descriptions  are  in  most  cases 
not  so  elaborate  as  those  in  the  previous  volume,  to 
correspond  with  the  lesser  importance  of  the  books 
of  this  century,  but  the  general  plan  of  the  work  is 
the  same. 

The  two  sons  of  John  Carter  Brown  spent  many 
hours  in  the  library  room  while  Mr.  Bartlett  was 
preparing  the  material  for  the  seventeenth-century 
volume.  Under  his  guidance  they  becam e  acquainted 
with  most  of  the  treasures,  and  learned  to  know 
what  the  books  stood  for.  They  helped  him  by 
copying  titles  and  by  verifying  the  references  for 
the  notes.  The  elder,  John  Nicholas  Brown,  was 
especially  interested  in  this  work.  When  the  Cat- 

1 37  3 


JOHN  CARTER  BROWN  LIBRARY 

alogue  was  at  last  in  the  printer's  hands,  he  read 
much  of  the  proof  and  insisted  upon  the  correction 
of  every  error  which  his  keen  eye  noted. 

"The  printers  seem  to  have  made  sad  havoc 
and  blunders  with  the  collations/' he  wrote  on  Sep- 
tember 15,  1880.  "Some  they  have  so  mixed  as 
to  be  unintelligible.  I  have  corrected  these  as  far 
as  I  am  able,  but  trust  to  your  discrimination  to 
revise  what  I  have  done.  .  .  .  Don't  you  think  the 
facsimile  titles  look  rather  blurred  and  the  words 
run  together?  but  I  suppose  that  these  will  all  be 
reset  and  put  into  shape  for  the  final  issue.  I  hope 
you  won't  think  I  am  all  the  time  'straining  at 
gnats'  or  'making  mountains  out  of  mole-hills.'" 
His  corrections  ranged  from  omitted  Spanish  tildes 
to  misdated  titles,  from  inconsistent  uses  of  type 
or  of  bibliographical  terms  to  translations  that  did 
not  represent  the  meaning  of  the  original  text. 
"You  must  not  think  I  am  too  particular  about 
trifles,"  he  adds  to  a  letter  dated  September  7  of 
the  same  year,  "but  you  know  how  anxious  we 
both  are  to  get  everything  to  the  smallest  iota  just 
right,  so  I  know  you  will  excuse  the  criticisms  I 
have  made." 


I  38  3 


THE  TRANSITION 

SOPHIA  Augusta  Brown's  interest  in  the  Li- 
brary was  not  limited  by  her  regard  for  her 
husband's  memory.  Very  soon  after  her  marriage 
she  had  begun  to  share  his  fondness  for  the  books. 
Her  "  lively  pen  "  wrote  many  of  his  letters  dur- 
ing their  long  Newport  summers,  and  when  these 
were  concerned  with  Library  matters  there  was 
never  any  uncertainty  about  the  instructions  which 
she  phrased.  More  clearly  than  her  husband,  she 
foresaw  that  this  was  to  be  the  most  precious  of 
their  family  heirlooms,  and  she  encouraged  every 
purchase  which  promised  to  give  it  increased  dis- 
tinction. 

"  Sealed  my  long  letter  to  you  &  was  just  going 
to  the  P.  O.  when  Mrs.  Brown  asked  if  I  had  au- 
thorised the  purchase  of  the  *  Vespuccius  of  1504/ 
Finding  I  had  not,  she  has  persuaded  me  to  send 
you  an  order  for  it  which  on '  sober  second  thought' 
I  have  concluded  to  do,"  wrote  John  Carter  Brown 
tohis  agentin  France  in  July,  1 872.  If  Mrs.  Brown's 
advice  had  prevailed,  the  Library  would  have 
secured  the  Gutenberg  Bible  from  the  Perkins 
collection,  and  other  of  the  more  monumental 
volumes  that  came  upon  the  market  during  the 
years  of  her  married  life. 

[  39  ] 


JOHN  CARTER  BROWN  LIBRARY 

After  her  husband's  death,  Sophia  Augusta 
Brown  assumed  the  responsibility  for  maintain- 
ing the  Library.  She  bought  only  a  few  books,  but 
these  were  selected  with  very  sound  judgment  and 
with  a  deliberate  purpose.  Mrs.  Brown  apparently 
felt  that  the  concentration  of  attention  upon  a 
single  subject  had  deprived  the  Library  of  cer- 
tain characteristics  which  it  ought  to  have  in  order 
to  acquire  a  lasting  distinction.  To  remedy  this  by 
broadening  its  range,  she  secured  half  a  dozen  vol- 
umes of  the  highest  importance,  without  any  one 
of  which  no  great  collection  would  seem  quite  com- 
plete. These  and  the  others  in  which  her  firm  sig- 
nature appears  upon  the  first  fly  leaf  have  each 
an  intrinsic  interest  which  appeals  to  every  visitor, 
however  general  his  information  or  narrow  his 
special  knowledge. 

During  one  of  her  visits  to  London,  Mrs.  Brown 
made  the  acquaintance  of  Frederick  S.  Ellis.  A 
friendship  developed  which  was  of  the  utmost  con- 
sequence to  the  Library.  Ellis's  intimacy  with  Wil- 
liam Morris  and  his  editorial  share  in  the  work  of 
the  Kelmscott  Press  is  likely  to  obscure  the  facl 
that  he  was  one  of  the  great  English  booksellers. 
Under  his  guidance  Mrs.  Brown  purchased  a  very 
fine  First  Folio  Shakespeare,  and  good  copies  of 
the  other  three  seventeenth-century  editions.  He 

[  40  3 


THE  TRANSITION 

likewise  found  for  her  the  first  and  second  edi- 
tions of  "  Paradise  Lost"  and  the  first  "Paradise 
Regained/' 

Much  more  to  her  personal  liking  were  the 
four  "Books  of  Hours"  which  Ellis  selected  as 
examples  of  the  work  of  the  fifteenth-century  illu- 
minators of  manuscripts.  Somewhat  later  in  date 
is  an  exquisite  little  manuscript  "Horae"  in  a  con- 
temporary Florentine  goldwork  binding.  This  was 
once  in  the  possession  of  Horace  Walpole,  who  en- 
tertained the  belief,  no  longer  tenable,  that  it  was 
the  work  of  Giulio  Clovio.  A  printed  "Horse"  of 
Pigouchet's  edition  of  August  22, 1498,  is  likewise 
in  its  original  binding.  A  very  early  Swabian  manu- 
script "  Graduale,"  and  a  delightful  "  Horse  "  from 
the  hand  of  a  Spanish  scribe,  were  added  to  this 
group  of  his  mother's  favourites  by  her  younger 
son. 

Mrs.  Brown  brought  up  her  children  to  regard 
their  father's  Library  as  the  most  precious  of  their 
possessions, and  the  one  having  the  first  claim  upon 
them  to  maintain  its  prestige  and  its  preeminence. 
Harold  Brown,  the  younger  son,  made  a  number 
of  purchases  for  the  Library  under  Mr.  Bartlett's 
direction.  One  lot  which  he  secured  at  the  sale  of 
the  Henry  C.  Murphy  library  in  1884,  interested 
him  especially.  It  comprised  an  unbroken  series 

c  41  ] 


JOHN  CARTER  BROWN  LIBRARY 

of  the  sermons  published  by  the  Society  for  the 
Propagation  of  the  Gospel  in  Foreign  Parts  dur- 
ing the  hundred  years  following  its  organization  in 
1701.  A  devoted  Churchman,  Harold  Brown  was 
particularly  pleased  when  he  found  his  interest  in 
his  father's  Library  joined  that  in  the  history  of 
the  church.  All  the  records  of  the  activity  of  the 
"S.P.G/'made  a  strong  appeal  to  him.  Besides  this 
set  of  the  sermons,  the  Library  secured  another 
collection  of  untrimmed  copies  of  these  publica- 
tions, many  of  which  are  printed  on  a  larger  paper 
than  the  ordinary  issues.  It  also  has  a  number  of 
broadsides  and  occasional  tracts  relating  to  the 
Society  and  its  efforts  to  provide  for  an  American 
bishopric. 

Harold  Brown  was  a  diligent  student  of  Church 
History,  and  especially  of  the  doctrine,  organiza- 
tion, and  ritual  of  the  English  Church.  Soon  after 
the  building  of  a  chapel  in  memory  of  Bishop 
Berkeley  at  Middletown,  near  Newport,  he  was 
asked  by  Bishop  Clarke  to  name  it,  and  for  it  he 
chose  the  dedication  of  St.  Columba.  It  was  in  this 
connection  that,  with  his  friend  Daniel  Berkeley 
Updike,  he  made  "an  inquiry  into  the  naming  of 
churches  in  the  United  States/'the  results  of  which 
they  issued  in  a  volume,  privately  printed  in  1 891 , 
"  On  the  Dedication  of  American  Churches,  by  two 

t  42  ] 


THE  TRANSITION 

Laymen  of  the  Dioceseof  Rhode  Island."  Both  were 
deeply  interested  in  the  history  of  the  Episcopal 
Church,  the  Catholic  aspe6l  of  which  more  partic- 
ularly attracted  them.  They  again  joined  forces 
to  produce  in  1896  a  splendid  Altar  Book,  which, 
although  exaclly  conforming  to  the  Standard  Book 
of  Common  Prayer  and  duly  authorized,  it  was 
their  aim  to  show  indistinguishable  in  most  respe6ts 
from  the  pre-Reformation  Missals.  It  was  through 
the  preparation  of  this  book  that  The  Merrymount 
Press  had  its  beginnings  —  a  venture  in  which 
Mr.  Brown  was  deeply  interested. 

In  connection  with  his  studies  of  the  history  and 
teaching  of  the  English  Church  and  of  the  Epis- 
copal Church  in  America,  Harold  Brown  secured 
perfect  copies  of  all  but  one  of  the  original  editions 
of  the  significant  revisions  of  the  Book  of  Common 
Prayer.  The  Prayer  Books  and  the  publications  of 
the  Society  for  the  Propagation  of  the  Gospel  in 
Foreign  Parts  form  the  nucleus  of  "  The  Harold 
Brown  Collection  of  Books  on  the  History  of  the 
Church  in  America,"  to  which  the  room  at  the  left 
of  the  entrance  to  the  Library  building  is  devoted. 
These  books,  together  with  his  twelfth  and  fif- 
teenth century  manuscripts,  his  collection  of  auto- 
graphs of  the  Signers  of  the  Declaration  of  Inde- 
pendence, and  other  books  of  value  to  the  Library, 

C  43  D 


JOHN  CARTER  BROWN  LIBRARY 

were  given  to  it  by  Mrs.  Harold  Brown  after  her 
husband's  death  on  May  10,  1900. 

The  Harold  Brown  Colle6tion,  besides  sharing 
in  the  general  growth  of  the  Library  during  its 
first  decade  as  a  separate  institution,  has  received 
a  number  of  gifts  from  Mrs.  Harold  Brown.  The 
most  important  of  these  are  the  "  Franklin  Prayer 
Book,"  published  by  Lord  Le  Despenser  in  1773; 
Henry  the  Eighth's  "  King's  Book"  of  1543;  and 
a  delightful  copy  in  its  original  covers  of  the 
"  Christian  Prayers  and  Meditations  in  English, 
French,  Italian,  Spanish,  Greeke,and  Latine,"pre- 
pared  for  the  personal  use  of  Queen  Elizabeth  in 
1569.  The  Library  also  possesses  a  copy  of  the 
"Defensio  D.  Petri  Martyris  ad  Riccardi  Smythaei 
libellos  de  Caslibatu  sacerdotum"  which  was  once 
in  the  library  of  the  Virgin  Queen. 

In  the  pleasant  task  of  inspiring  her  sons  with 
an  appreciation  of  their  father's  library,  Sophia 
Augusta  Brown  had  an  enthusiastic  and  helpful 
ally  in  General  Rush  C.  Hawkins.  No  better  guide 
could  have  been  found  to  show  the  way  along 
bookish  paths.  General  Hawkins,  whose  wife  was 
a  daughter  of  the  third  Nicholas  Brown,  began  to 
collect  fifteenth-century  books  in  1855.  Gradually 
his  quest  narrowed  to  the  "  first  presses,"  the  typo- 
graphic beginnings  in  each  town  where  printing 

[  44  ] 


THE  TRANSITION 

started  before  the  year  1501  .His  researches,  persis- 
tently followed,  carried  him  into  intimate  friendly 
relations  with  the  men  at  the  head  of  most  of  the 
important  European  libraries  and  all  the  lead- 
ing booksellers  to  whom  a  book  meant  more  than 
the  price  it  would  fetch.  With  their  help,  General 
Hawkins  secured  a  notable  proportion  of  the  "  first 
books  of  the  first  presses."  The  catalogue  of  his 
collection  prepared  by  Alfred  W.  Pollard  of  the 
British  Museum,  in  1910,  is  almost  a  history  of 
the  first  fifty  years  of  printing.  These  volumes  are 
now  deposited  in  the  Annmary  Brown  Memorial, 
which  was  erefted  by  General  Hawkins  after  his 
wife's  death  in  1903. 

The  Annmary  Brown  Memorial  building  is  situ- 
ated only  a  few  rods  from  the  John  Carter  Brown 
Library.  In  anticipation  of  this  neighbourly  future 
of  the  two  collections,  and  under  General  Haw- 
kins's guidance,  Mrs.  Brown  and  her  sons  pur- 
chased a  number  of  early  printed  books.  Among 
these  are  the  "  Catholicon"  of  1460,  Fust  and 
SchoefFer's  Bible  of  1462, and  an  unsurpassed  copy 
of  Bocace,  "  De  la  Ruine  des  Nobles  Hommes  et 
Femmes,"  printed  by  Caxton's  collaborator  at 
Bruges,  Colard  Mansion,  in  1476.  The  Ratcliffe 
copy  of  Caxton's  "Ryal  book,  or  a  book  for  a 
kyng,"  printed  in  1484,  begins  a  shelf  of  English 

I  45  ] 


JOHN  CARTER  BROWN  LIBRARY 

books  which  holds  the  1493  edition  of  the  "  Golden 
Legende,"  Wynkyn  de  Worde's  "Thordynary  of 
Crysten  Men"  of  1506,  and  Guillame  Owein's 
"Le  Bregement  de  toutes  les  estatutes,"  printed 
by  Pynson  in  1521.  The  only  block  book  in  the 
collection  is  one  of  the  first  edition  of  the  "  Pauper 
Bible/'  A  copy  of  a  Strassburg  edition  of  the  "  Scru- 
tinium  Script urar urn/'  by  Paulus  de  Sanfta  Maria, 
not  otherwise  significant,  is  in  a  binding  signed  by 
Richenbach  of  Gyslingen  in  the  year  1470. 


C  46  3 


THE  DONOR 


JOHN  Nicholas  Brown,  during  his  frequent 
trips  to  Europe,  visited  the  important  public  li- 
braries and  many  of  the  notable  private  collections. 
With  the  help  of  General  Hawkins  andof  Mr.  Ellis 
he  learned  to  recognize  the  distinguishing  char- 
acteristics of  the  really  great  books.  They  also 
taught  him  the  rudiments  of  bibliography,  exact- 
ness and  completeness.  The  notebooks  which  con- 
tain memoranda  in  his  boyish  hand  recording  his 
examination  of  copies  of  the  Columbus  Letter,  the 
Vespuccius  traCts,  and  the  Colard  Mansion  im- 
prints, show  an  intelligent  understanding  of  the 
essentials  of  book  description  that  leaves  little  to 
be  desired. 

More  important  than  all  the  books  were  the 
friendships  that  were  formed  with  Father  Ceriani 
at  theAmbrosian  Library,  Charles  Ruelens of  Brus- 
sels, who  dedicated  his  facsimile  edition  of  the  Co- 
lumbus "Epistola"  to  Mr.  Brown,  Alfred  Henry 
Huth,  and  others  whose  experience  and  advice  had 
a  strong  influence  upon  his  future  book-buying. 
At  the  Grolier  Club  in  New  York  he  made  the 
acquaintance  of  Charles  H.  Kalbfleisch  and  some 
of  the  other  rivals  of  his  own  generation  in  the 
field  of  Americana.  Whenever  opportunity  offered, 

C  47  ] 


JOHN  CARTER  BROWN  LIBRARY 

he  compared  their  treasures  with  the  copies  in  his 
father's  library.  The  test  was  often  disappointing. 
The  prizes  which  his  contemporaries  had  secured 
were  in  altogether  too  many  instances  larger  than 
his,  in  finer  original  condition,  and  more  perfeCt 
in  minute  but  all-important  particulars.  His  Library 
contained  most  of  the  famous  American  books,  but 
these  had  been  secured  in  the  days  when  the  title 
of  a  volume  and  its  appearance,  rather  than  its  size 
and  collation,  formed  the  usual  basis  for  a  book- 
buyer's  decision.  Half  a  century  later  the  standards 
of  collecting  had  become  more  definite.  The  pos- 
session of  a  title  no  longer  guaranteed  that  the 
pages  which  followed  it  were  what  a  discriminat- 
ing bibliophile  ought  to  desire. 

John  Nicholas  Brown  set  himself  to  the  task  of 
restoring  the  Library  to  the  position  from  which 
it  had  been  allowed  to  slip.  He  found  a  loyal  and 
enthusiastic  helper  in  the  son  of  his  father's  first 
agent,  Henry  N.  Stevens.  The  London  and  Con- 
tinental book  markets  were  watched  attentively, 
and  year  by  year,  as  opportunity  offered  to  secure 
satisfactory  copies  of  important  books  that  the 
Library  needed,  the  quality  of  the  collection 
improved.  All  told,  the  number  of  volumes  pur- 
chased by  John  Nicholas  Brown  makes  very 
little  impression  upon  the  Library  statistics.  By 

C  48  ] 


THE  DONOR 

any  other  standard  they  added  at  least  a  half  to  its 
value. 

There  have  been  many  " red  letter  days"  in  the 
annals  of  the  Library.  One  of  these,  in  the  father's 
time,  was  August  25,  1873,  when  John  Carter 
Brown  decided  upon  the  extravagance  of  sending 
a  message  by  the  telegraphic  cable  to  order  the 
"  Dutch  Vespuccius."  He  was  taking  the  waters  at 
Saratoga,  where  the  advance  sheets  of  the  cata- 
logue of  Muller  of  Amsterdam  reached  him  after 
a  fortnight's  delay.  The  tra6l  was  described  with- 
out a  price,  but  after  some  thought  he  decided  to 
try  for  it  and  at  once  wrote  to  a  New  York  friend 
asking  him  to  send  the  message.  The  dozen  words 
cost  $26,  but  they  won  the  book,  which  is  still  the 
only  recorded  copy,  by  arriving  two  hours  ahead 
of  a  letter  from  Mr.  Lenox,  who  had  counted  upon 
the  advantage  which  New  York  enjoys  over  Provi- 
dence in  matters  involving  a  foreign  mail. 

None  of  the  earlier  dates,  however,  compare 
with  the  first  two  days  of  June,  1 893,  one  of  which 
brought  word  that  the  "King  Philip  the  Second" 
atlas  had  been  secured  at  the  sale  of  the  Spitzer 
colle6lion,  and  the  next  that  the  volume  of  man- 
uscript maps  dated  1511  and  signed  by  Vesconte 
de  Maggiolo,  from  the  Heredia  library,  would 
accompany  it  from  Paris  to  Providence.  These 

C  49  ] 


JOHN  CARTER  BROWN  LIBRARY 

and  twenty-four  other  manuscript  maps  are  de- 
scribed in  the  Library  report  for  1913.  One  of 
them,  dated  1667,  had  been  in  the  family's  pos- 
session since  it  was  brought  from  Surinam  by  the 
captain  of  one  of  the  first  Nicholas  Brown's  ves- 
sels. More  recent  acquisitions  are  the  Glareanus 
manuscript  of  about  1516,  and  Louis  Joliet's  large 
map  showing  the  country  he  traversed  during  his 
descent  of  the  Mississippi  River  in  1673  and  1674. 

Manuscripts  do  not  come  properly  within  the 
scope  of  this  Library.  John  Carter  Brown  bought  a 
few  documents  before  he  definitely  decided  upon  his 
limits,  and  his  sons  secured  a  number  of  valuable 
autographs.  Several  manuscript  vocabularies  were 
added  to  the  shelves  which  hold  the  works  on  na- 
tive American  linguistics,  at  the  suggestion  of  Dan- 
iel G.  Brinton,  Charles  P.  Bowditch,  and  other  stu- 
dents who  have  used  this  part  of  the  Library.  Five 
volumes  of  papers  relating  to  the  Bahama  Islands 
came  from  the  sale  of  George  Chalmers's  library. 
These  were  supplemented  by  a  collection  of  docu- 
ments made  by  Lord  Sheffield  which  concern  the 
British  island  colonies.  One  of  the  volumes  in  which 
the  Earl  of  Clarendon  bound  his  correspondence 
was  purchased  in  order  to  secure  two  letters  written 
by  the  militant  Rhode  Islander,  Samuel  Gorton. 
With  the  Leon  library  came  fourteen  thick  tomes  of 

c  50  3 


THE  DONOR 


"informaciones"  presented  by  the  novitiates  of  the 
Franciscan  Order  in  New  Spain  between  1576  and 
1822.  The  initial  document  signed  and  sealed  by 
the  first  American  archbishop,  Juan  deZumarraga, 
in  1535,  came  from  the  Barlow  sale.  Champlain's 
account  of  his  voyage  to  the  West  Indies  in  1598 
has  been  reprinted  several  times  from  the  manu- 
script belonging  to  the  Library,  but  the  coloured 
illustrations  have  not  yet  been  reproduced. 

Washington's  confidential  letters  to  Joseph 
Reed,  and  his  cash  memoranda  books  for  the  years 
1 794  to  1 799,  are  worthy  memorials  of  the  Father 
of  his  Country.  The  founder  of  Rhode  Island  is  even 
more  adequately  represented  by  six  long  autograph 
letters.  Many  other  names  of  national  renown  from 
the  time  of  William  Bradford  to  that  of  Thomas 
Jefferson  are  signed  to  letters  in  the  collection.  Visit- 
ors are  always  interested  in  these  documents,  which 
are  of  the  utmost  value  for  making  the  figures 
of  the  past  seem  real  to  the  present.  Their  use  is, 
however, almost  wholly  illustrative.  Each  purchase 
of  a  manuscript  has  confirmed  the  successive  own- 
ers of  the  Library  in  the  opinion  that  their  sys- 
tematic collecting  should  be  restricted  to  the 
printed  books. 

With  the  manuscript  material  have  likewise 
been  rejected  the  printed  volumes  containing  doc- 

c  51  ] 


JOHN  CARTER  BROWN  LIBRARY 

uments  of  earlier  centuries  first  published  in  the 
nineteenth.  These  volumes  of  colonial  source  ma- 
terial are  found  in  every  large  library.  With  these 
libraries  the  John  Carter  Brown  Library  has  no 
intention  of  competing.  Mr.  Brown  devoted  his 
efforts  to  securing  the  books  which  the  public 
libraries  could  not  afford  to  buy.  He  kept  these 
for  the  use  of  students  to  whom  they  would  other- 
wise have  been  inaccessible.  The  institution  which 
his  son  established  has  maintained  these  essential 
characteristics  of  the  colle6tor,s  policy. 

Another  date  which  still  arouses  a  thrill  in  a 
bookish  spirit  is  that  of  May  1,  1896,  when  John 
Nicholas  Brown  brought  home  the  "  Pictorial  Co- 
lumbus" to  take  the  place  of  the  only  known  per- 
fect copy,  from  theLibri  sale,  which  his  father  gave 
to  Mr.  Lenox  in  1849.  The  instructive  story  of 
that  episode  is  familiar  to  readers  of  Mr.  Stevens's 
"  RecolleCtions/'  The  days  when  the  boxes  contain- 
ing the  Ternaux  books  and  those  from  the  Duke 
of  Sussex  sale  were  opened,  were  recalled  in  Sep- 
tember, 1896,  when  the  library  of  Dr.  Nicolas  Leon, 
of  Guadalupe  Hidalgo,  Mexico,  with  its  handful 
of  the  Zumarraga  tra6ts  of  1 543-46,  Molina's  Na- 
huatl  dictionary  of  1555  in  the  original  decorated 
binding,  the  sixteenth-century  Tarascan  publica- 
tions of  Fray  Maturino  Gilberti,  and  two  hundred 

C  52  J 


THE  DONOR 

other  volumes  in  the  native  languages  of  Mexico, 
arrived  in  Providence. 

Pleasant  hours  followed  the  unpacking  of  the 
copies  of  Ptolemy's  Geography,  printed  at  Bologna 
with  the  erroneous  date  "  1462,"  and  at  Ulm  in 
1 482,  the  latter  containing  certain  leaves  for  which 
students  had  been  hunting  since  1803.  These  two 
volumes  in  their  dingy  old  bindings,  and  the  world- 
map  taken  from  a  copy  of  the  1513  Strassburg  edi- 
tion, on  which  the  word  "America"  was  printed 
perhaps  for  the  first  time,  help  the  Ptolemy  cor- 
ner of  the  map  room  to  maintain  its  proud  position 
of  superiority  over  all  its  rivals.  The  "  Relation  de 
la  ViCtoire  remportee  par  les  Franfois,  sur  le  Ge- 
neral Braddock,"  the  two  books  containing  notes 
written  by  Ferdinand  Columbus  which  came  from 
the  Barlow  collection  in  1890,  the  "Plan  pour 
former  un  Establissement  en  Caroline"  in  1686, 
from  the  Lobris  sale  of  1895,  and  the  first  edition  of 
John  Brereton's  "  Relation  "  of  his  visit  to  the  New 
England  coast  in  1602,  brightened  other  days. 

One  by  one  John  Nicholas  Brown  added  most  of 
these  and  many  more  treasures  to  the  collection. 
The  copies  that  he  secured  left  little  chance  for  any 
rival  to  show  him  a  better.  He  loved  his  books 
for  their  many-sided  individual  characteristics.  He 
liked  to  handle  those  that  he  knew  about,  and  when 

[  53  n 


JOHN  CARTER  BROWN  LIBRARY 

they  satisfied  him,  he  wanted  to  have  them  cared 
for  as  their  merits  deserved.  In  Paris,  while  exam- 
ining the  treasures  of  Baron  James  de  Rothschild's 
collection,  and  elsewhere,  he  learned  to  appreci- 
ate good  binding.  He  sought  the  acquaintance  of 
the  craftsmen  at  the  head  of  the  leading  ateliers, 
and  Paul  Lortic,  Chambolle-Duru,  and  Thibaron- 
Joly  were  given  an  opportunity  to  send  him  what 
they  considered  their  best  work.  Adolphe  Cuzin, 
however,  was  the  one  who  pleased  him  thoroughly. 
To  this  master  workman  he  entrusted  most  of  his 
purchases  that  needed  a  binder's  attention. 

When  he  secured  a  copy  of  the  edition  of  the 
Columbus  "Epistola"  of  1493,  which  Harrisse 
placed  as  Number  One  in  his  "  Bibliotheca  Ameri- 
cana Vetustissima,"  he  asked  Cuzin  to  put  it  in  a 
binding  worthy  of  this  corner-stone  of  an  Ameri- 
can library.  Owner  and  craftsman  consulted  over 
every  detail  of  the  design  and  the  execution,  and 
the  result  ranks  high  among  examples  of  the  bib- 
liopegic  art.  It  might  have  been  surpassed  by  the 
binding  on  the  "  Pictorial  Columbus,"  which  was 
entrusted  to  Cuzin's  pupil  and  successor,  Mercier. 
This  had  been  in  hand  for  more  than  three  years 
at  the  time  of  Mr.  Brown's  death,  and  was  com- 
pleted as  nearly  as  possible  in  accordance  with  his 
intentions.  These  and  the  other  bindings  by  these 

C  54  ] 


THE  DONOR 

two  masters  of  the  craft  constitute  John  Nicholas 
Brown's  more  distinctly  personal  contribution  to 
the  Library. 

John  Nicholas  Brown  welcomed  every  oppor- 
tunity to  become  acquainted  with  his  books  and 
with  those  who  shared  his  interest  in  them.  The 
Library  correspondence  occupied  much  of  his  time 
whenever  he  was  in  Providence.  Justin  Winsor,Sir 
Clements  Markham,  Joaquin  Garcia  Icazbalceta, 
William  I.  Knapp,  Moses  Coit  Tyler,  George  H. 
Moore,  Charles  Francis  Adams,  Lyman  C.  Dra- 
per, James  Grant  Wilson,  Samuel  Abbott  Green, 
and  Frederick  D.  Stone  are  among  the  names  that 
recur  in  his  files  and  letter-books.  A  long  series  of 
letters  from  Wilberforce  Eames  mark  the  prog- 
ress of  the  work  for  Sabin's  Dictionary,  and  show 
how  freely  he  drew  upon  his  Providence  corre- 
spondent for  minute  details.  Almost  as  many  from 
James  C.  Pilling  ask  for  information  which  reap- 
pears on  the  pages  of  the  bibliographies  of  Amer- 
ican native  languages  printed  by  the  United  States 
Bureau  of  Ethnology. 

There  were  many  other  letters  from  investi- 
gators about  whom  Mr.  Brown  had  no  personal 
knowledge,  but  whose  questions  he  would  gladly 
have  answered  if  he  could  have  found  the  time  to 
do  so  satisfactorily.  He  recognized  that  the  Library 

C  55  ] 


* 


JOHN  CARTER  BROWN  LIBRARY 

had  become  an  institution  and  that  American  schol- 
ars were  justified  in  feeling  that  they  had  a  right 
to  use  it.  He  had  no  desire  to  ignore  these  ques- 
tions,but  many  things  had  a  more  imperative  claim 
upon  his  attention.  The  care  of  the  books,  as  well 
as  the  correspondence,  demanded  personal  atten- 
tion which  he  was  no  longer  able  to  give,  and  so 
on  May  1 , 1 895,  George  Parker  Winship  was  en- 
gaged as  his  librarian. 

The  first  business  of  the  librarian  was  to  find 
the  books.  The  library  room,  into  which  they  had 
moved  when  they  crowded  themselves  out  of  the 
house,  had  come  to  be  too  small  to  hold  them  all, 
in  Mr.  Bartlett's  time.  In  the  store-room  over  the 
coach  house  shelves  were  built  for  the  more  bulky 
tomes, — the  sixteenth-century  cosmographies  of 
Sebastian  Minister,  the  seventeenth-century  works 
of  Linschoten  and  de  Laet,  and  the  eighteenth-cen- 
tury compilers, — and  for  most  of  the  nineteenth- 
century  volumes.  Among  these  later  books  were 
a  considerable  number  of  the  narratives  written 
by  von  Humboldt  and  the  other  European  visitors 
to  North  and  South  America  during  the  first  third 
of  the  last  century.  After  Mr.  Bartlett's  death,  on 
May  29,  1886,  the  books  were  cleaned  carefully 
and  periodically.  Each  time  they  were  replaced 
with  a  proper  regard  for  the  appearance  of  the 

i  56  ] 


THE  DONOR 

room,  but  the  arrangement  of  the  shelves  suffered 
in  the  process.  New  volumes  also  arrived  by  gift 
and  purchase,  and  found  a  resting-place  where 
chance  offered. 

The  collection  continued  to  grow,  until  it  needed 
a  home  of  its  own.  John  Nicholas  Brown,  to  whom 
the  legal  title  to  the  Library  was  transferred  by  his 
mother  on  January  28, 1898,  determined  to  erecl 
a  building  in  which  the  books  would  be  safe  from 
danger  by  fire,  where  they  might  be  conveniently 
arranged  and  consulted, and  which  should  be  a  per- 
manent and  appropriate  memorial  of  his  father's 
life-long  interest  in  American  history  and  scholar- 
ship. 

The  plans  for  the  Library  building  were  the  ob- 
ject of  much  thought.  The  idea  of  such  a  memorial 
began  to  take  shape  soon  after  he  became  of  age, 
in  1882,  and  for  fifteen  years  was  never  long  ab- 
sent from  his  mind.  He  revisited  many  of  the  Euro- 
pean libraries  and  studied  the  arrangements  for 
caring  for  precious  volumes  both  in  private  hands 
and  in  public  institutions.  He  watched  with  espe- 
cial interest  the  development  of  the  plans  for  the 
John  Rylands  Library  at  Manchester,  England. 
This  library,  which  is  Mrs.  Rylands 's  memorial  to 
her  husband,  promised  to  be,  as  it  has  become, 
a  model  for  what  Mr.  Brown  proposed  to  establish 

z  57  3 


JOHN  CARTER  BROWN  LIBRARY 

in  Providence.  The  purchase  of  Earl  Spencer's 
Althorp  collection  made  the  John  Rylands  Li- 
brary for  students  of  the  history  of  early  printing 
what  the  John  Carter  Brown  Library  is  to  those  in- 
terested in  Americana.  The  library  at  Manchester 
fills  a  broader  sphere  as  a  general  reference  library 
for  the  seriously  minded  readers  of  the  commu- 
nity. In  Providence,  the  needs  of  these  readers 
are  supplied  by  the  library  of  the  University  and 
by  the  Public  Library.  The  former  occupied,  until 
the  completion  of  the  John  Hay  Library  in  1910, 
a  building  ere6ted  as  a  memorial  to  John  Carter 
Brown,  and  the  latter  possesses  one  which  was  built 
for  its  use  by  John  Nicholas  Brown. 

The  gift  of  the  Providence  Public  Library  build- 
ing was  made  in  February,  1897.  A  year  later 
Mr.  Brown  drew  up  a  statement  of  what  he  had 
decided  upon  as  requisite  for  his  own  Library.  This 
outline  was  given  to  a  number  of  architects,  who 
were  asked  to  submit  sketches  and  preliminary 
plans.  After  a  study  of  their  drawings,  George 
Foster  Shepley,  of  the  firm  of  Shepley,  Rutan  & 
Coolidge,  was  commissioned  to  make  the  finished 
plans.  These  had  been  accepted,  except  for  a  few 
minor  details,  when  John  Nicholas  Brown  died,  on 
May  1,  1900. 

The  Trustees  appointed  under  Mr.  Brown's  will, 
C  58  1 


THE  DONOR 

George  W.  R.  Matteson  and  Robert  H.  I.  God- 
dard,  in  1901  presented  his  Bibliotheca  Ameri- 
cana to  Brown  University,  in  accordance  with  the 
authority  given  them  by  the  will.  The  Corporation 
of  the  University,  at  its  meeting  in  September  of 
that  year,  accepted  the  conditions  of  the  gift  and 
appointed  a  Committee  of  Management  to  take 
charge  of  the  ereftion  of  the  Library  building  and 
the  transfer  to  it  of  the  books,  and  to  direft  the 
administration  of  the  colle61;ion.  This  Committee, 
which  has  continued  unchanged,  consists  of  Mrs. 
John  Nicholas  Brown,  President  William  Herbert 
Perry  Faunce,  Robert  Hale  Ives  Goddard,  Wil- 
liam Vail  Kellen,  and  Stephen  Ostrom  Edwards. 

The  spirit  with  which  the  Committee  of  Man- 
agement entered  upon  its  responsibilities  is  shown 
by  one  of  its  first  a&s,  by  which  the  members 
agreed  to  provide  by  personal  subscription  such 
funds  as  might  be  needed  for  desirable  purchases* 
before  the  income  from  the  endowment  fund  be- 
came available.  They  were  joined  in  this  subscrip- 
tion by  Colonel  William  Goddard,  the  Chancel- 
lor of  the  University  and  the  senior  member  of 
the  firm  of  Brown  &  Ives.  The  money  provided 
by  the  Committee  enabled  the  Library  to  secure 
an  autograph  letter  of  Roger  Williams,  a  copy  of 
Ptolemy's  " Cosmographia"  of  1482  which  con- 

C  59  ] 


JOHN  CARTER  BROWN  LIBRARY 

tains  a  world-map  otherwise  unknown, and  a  large 
colle6lion  of  the  official  publications  of  the  Con- 
tinental Congresses  of  1775-1783. 

A  site  for  the  Library  was  selected  adjoining 
the  Middle  Campus  of  the  University,  and  on  this 
the  building,  for  which  the  will  provided  $1 50,000, 
was  erected  substantially  in  accordance  with  the 
plans  approved  by  Mr.  Brown.  The  location  on  the 
University  grounds  made  it  possible  to  eliminate 
the  furnace,  with  its  dirt  and  danger, by  heating  the 
building  from  the  college  boiler  plant;  and  there 
were  other  minor  alterations  due  to  the  changed 
conditions  of  a  public  institution. 

The  building  with  its  contents,  and  an  endow- 
ment fund  of  $500,000,  was  formally  transferred 
to  the  University  on  May  17, 1904.  The  exercises 
on  this  occasion  included  an  address  by  Professor 
Frederick  Jackson  Turner  of  the  University  of 
Wisconsin,  and  an  historical  account  of  the  Li- 
brary by  Dr.  William  Vail  Kellen  of  the  Cor- 
poration of  Brown  University.  These  addresses, 
with  the  report  of  the  other  exercises  of  the  day, 
were  printed  by  the  Library.  The  Dedication  Vol- 
ume also  contains  the  portions  of  the  deed  of  gift 
that  are  of  permanent  interest,  and  the  seftion 
of  Mr.  Brown's  will  which  governed  the  arrange- 
ments for  the  future  of  the  Library.  Colonel  God- 

[  so  3 


THE  DONOR 

dard,  on  behalf  of  the  Trustees,  delivered  the  Li- 
brary into  the  keeping  of  President  Faunce  of 
Brown  University,  to  whom  the  keys  of  the  build- 
ing were  handed  by  Mr. Brown's  son, John  Nicho- 
las Brown,  born  February  21,  1900. 


C  61  ] 


THE  BUILDING 

THE  Library  building  covers  an  area  eighty 
feet  square,  and  is  subdivided  into  a  cruci- 
form main  portion  and  lower  rooms  occupying  the 
four  corners  of  the  structure.  The  design  of  the  ex- 
terior is  monumental  in  scale,  with  details  derived 
from  the  German  Ionic  style.  Limestone  has  been 
used  for  the  walls  and  cornices,  and  red  tile  for  the 
roof  of  the  high  portion.  A  richly  carved  cresting 
breaks  the  line  between  roof  and  cornice.  Spacious 
stone  steps  flanked  by  heavy  buttresses  ascend  to 
the  entrance,  which  is  deeply  recessed  and  flanked 
by  Ionic  columns  of  unusual  design,  above  which 
is  a  pediment  enriched  with  carving,  wherein  ap- 
pears the  Brown  family  coat-of-arms.  Over  the 
entrance  is  the  inscription,  "John  Carter  Brown 
Library/'  and  below,  over  the  doorway,  the  word 
"  Americana/' 

A  vestibule,  panelled  with  Italian  marble,  opens 
directly  into  the  main  room  of  the  building,  which 
occupies  about  half  of  the  floor  space  and  the  full 
height  of  the  structure.  Four  pillarsof  Indianalime- 
stone,  with  their  caps  lightened  by  gold  lines,  sup- 
port the  roof  and  guard  the  doorway  entering  the 
room  and  the  ample  fireplace  which  faces  it.  Low 
bookcases  of  bronze  metal  line  the  walls.  Near  the 

[  63  ] 


JOHN  CARTER  BROWN  LIBRARY 

centre  are  four  exhibition  cases,  in  which  books, 
engravings,  and  manuscripts  belonging  to  the  col- 
lection are  shown  from  time  to  time.  The  floor  is 
covered  with  heavy  Turkish  rugs.  On  the  mantel 
over  the  fireplace  stands  a  bust  of  John  Carter 
Brown, by  Franklin  Simmons,  and  above  this  hangs 
a  portrait,  by  Bonnat,  of  John  Nicholas  Brown, 
loaned  by  his  son.  A  tablet  in  the  vestibule  reads: 

IN  MEMORY  OF 
JOHN  NICHOLAS  BROWN 
OF  THE  CLASS  OF  1885 
WHO  GAVE  THIS  LIBRARY 
WITH  ITS  BUILDING  AND  ENDOWMENT 
TO  COMMEMORATE  THE  NAME  AND  WORK 
OF  HIS  FATHER 
JOHN  CARTER  BROWN 
OF  THE  CLASS  OF  1816 
FROM  WHOM  HE  INHERITED 
WITH  THE  LIBRARY 
LOVE  OF  KNOWLEDGE 
DEVOTION  TO  HISTORICAL  RESEARCH  AND 
APPRECIATION  OF  BEAUTIFUL  THINGS 

SPEAK  TO  THE  PAST  AND  IT  SHALL  TEACH  THEE 

Two  of  the  square  rooms  at  the  corners  of  the 
building  have  mahogany  cases  of  the  same  height 
as  those  in  the  main  room,  six  feet  nine  inches  from 
the  floor,  with  glass  shelves  behind  locked  doors. 
One  of  these  rooms  contains  the  Harold  Brown 
Collection  of  Books  on  the  History  of  the  Church 

C  64  ] 


THE  BUILDING 

in  America,  which  has  its  own  exhibition  case. The 
other  is  occupied  by  the  Leon  library  and  other 
books  on  the  history  and  languages  of  Spanish 
and  Portuguese  America.  The  map  room  contains 
larger  cases  for  the  atlases,  and  drawers  for  the 
separate  maps  and  charts,  the  facsimile  prints,  and 
the  file  of  engraved  portraits.  The  southeast  room, 
in  which  a  gallery  and  bookshelves  above  the  floor 
cases  were  added  in  1913,  is  the  work  room  of  the 
Library  staff.  Here  are  the  bibliographies  and  ref- 
erence books,  the  file  of  auction  and  booksellers' 
catalogues,  and  most  of  the  reprints  of  earlier 
American  books  issued  by  private  individuals  and 
by  printing  clubs  since  1800. 

The  Librarian's  room  occupies  the  middle  of  the 
eastern  side  of  the  building,  opposite  the  entrance. 
In  this  room  the  traditions  of  the  days  when  the 
collection  was  a  gentleman's  private  library  are 
preserved.  All  of  the  furnishings,  except  the  mod- 
ern letter-file  and  the  ele6lric-lighted  chandelier, 
came  from  the  library  room  at  Mr.  Brown's  home- 
stead. In  the  old  mahogany  cases,  the  original  edi- 
tions of  the  Columbus  Letter  and  the  Vespuccius 
trafts,the  Jesuit  Relations,  the  writings  of  Roger 
Williams,  and  the  volumes  of  De  Bry,  each  in  its 
brilliant  binding,  still  hold  the  places  to  which  John 
Carter  Brown  assigned  them.  If  he  could  revisit 

C  65  ] 


JOHN  CARTER  BROWN  LIBRARY 

his  collection  in  its  new  home,  he  would  find  these 
friends  he  was  fondest  of,  where  he  left  them.  His 
favourite  chair  has  the  place  of  honour  at  the  table 
on  which  he  examined  all  of  the  purchases  of  his 
later  years.  The  old  lamp  has  been  refitted  for  an 
ele6lric  current,  but  no  push  button  has  stolen  its 
dignity  from  the  bronze  table  bell.  The  rug  and  the 
antimacassars  are  the  same  as  in  the  founder's  day. 

Except  for  the  gallery  there  is  no  upper  story. 
The  stairway  from  the  rear  hallway  leads  down 
into  the  bindery  room.  Here  the  cripples  and  in- 
valids that  reach  the  Library  suffering  from  a  cen- 
tury or  more  of  negleft  or  abuse,  are  restored  as 
nearly  as  possible  to  their  original  strength,  and 
put  in  order  for  a  long  future.  The  Library  desires 
to  secure  perfeft  volumes  in  immaculate  condition 
as  anxiously  as  ever.  Any  book,  however,  is  pre- 
ferred in  the  shape  in  which  it  comes  upon  the  mar- 
ket, to  the  same  volume  after  it  has  been  restored 
by  unknown  hands.  Apparent  perfection  has  too 
often  been  purchased  at  the  cost  of  information 
which  might  have  been  important  to  the  students 
who  are  working  to  reconstruct  the  history  of 
printing  and  bookmaking. 

Beyond  the  bindery  are  the  packing  and  stor- 
age rooms,  and  the  photostat.  This  machine  repre- 
sents the  latest  and  most  radical  extension  of  the 

t  66  3 


THE  BUILDING 

Library's  activities.  It  was  installed  in  order  that 
photographic  copies  might  be  supplied  quickly  and 
at  a  low  cost  to  correspondents  who  wish  to  con- 
sult volumes  which  cannot  leave  the  building. 

The  founder  of  the  collection  loaned  his  treas- 
ures with  generous  freedom  for  many  years.  Grad- 
ually he,  like  his  rivals,  came  to  realize  that  he 
owned  many  books  which  he  might  never  be  able 
to  duplicate,  whatever  the  price  he  would  pay. 
The  books  that  were  asked  for  were  usually  those 
that  could  not  be  found  elsewhere, and  John  Carter 
Brown  let  them  leave  Providence  with  constantly 
increasing  anxiety.  There  is  no  record  that  any 
of  these  were  lost,  but  in  time  he  decided  that  he 
would  no  longer  entrust  his  books  to  the  post  or 
express,  much  less  to  the  care  of  a  borrower.  This 
rule  was  sometimes  broken  by  both  father  and  son, 
but  always  under  exceptional  circumstances  and 
with  many  misgivings.  The  employment  of  a  libra- 
rian made  it  possible  to  enforce  the  rule  more  abso- 
lutely, and  at  the  same  time  to  increase  the  useful- 
ness of  the  collection  to  students.  The  installation 
of  photographic  copying  is  a  further  development 
of  the  policy  of  rendering  the  utmost  service  to 
scholarship  consistent  with  the  preservation  of  the 
books  for  those  who  will  have  occasion  to  use  them 
in  the  future. 

C  67  ] 


THE  INSTITUTION 

AS  soon  as  the  Library  was  established  in  its 
JT\.  new  home,  an  account  of  stock  was  taken. 
Each  volume  before  it  left  the  library  room  at 
No.  357  Benefit  Street  was  given  a  serial  number, 
corresponding  with  that  on  a  card  on  which  its 
record  was  kept.  When  all  had  been  safely  trans- 
ferred to  the  locked  cases  in  the  new  building,  each 
card  was  verified  and  the  volume  put  in  its  classi- 
fied location.  The  chara&er  of  the  collection  and 
the  limited  use  of  it  by  visitors  made  it  possible  to 
do  this  with  great  care, to  guard  against  oversights, 
and  without  closing  the  building. 

The  verification  of  the  twelve  thousand  volumes 
was  a  simple  matter.  The  cards  represented,  how- 
ever, not  only  all  the  books  in  the  Benefit  Street 
house,  but  also  every  record  that  had  been  found  in 
the  printed  catalogues  or  elsewhere  that  implied 
the  possession  of  a  title.  Many  of  these  records  were 
inexaft,  and  for  the  next  four  years  much  of  the 
time  of  the  assistant  librarian  was  spent  in  try- 
ing to  untangle  the  confusions  of  half  a  century. 
For  many  of  the  cards  no  corresponding  book 
could  be  found.  A  few  of  the  missing  volumes  have 
been  recovered  from  neighbouring  libraries  to 
which  Mr.  Brown  had  given  them  in  his  occasional 

C  69  ] 


JOHN  CARTER  BROWN  LIBRARY 

efforts  to  keep  his  collection  within  comfortable 
or  housekeeperly  bounds.  For  most  of  the  others, 
reasons  have  been  discovered  which  account  for 
the  entry  and  which  often  throw  light  upon  the 
way  in  which  the  collection  has  grown.  The  num- 
ber of  titles  unaccounted  for,  that  may  have  been 
lost  during  seventy  years,  is  small  and  includes 
nothing  of  great  importance. 

Having  found  out  what  the  Library  actually  pos- 
sessed, the  next  step  was  to  learn  what  it  need  not 
buy.  The  city  of  Providence  has  many  libraries, 
each  with  a  distinct  individuality  as  well  as  its  own 
clientele.  In  each  of  these  there  are  seventeenth 
and  eighteenth  century  books  which  the  John  Car- 
ter Brown  Library  would  like  to  possess.  So  long 
as  they  are  available  for  its  use  where  they  are, 
however,  it  would  be  a  waste  of  money  to  dupli- 
cate them.  To  avoid  such  duplication  and  to  secure 
the  immediate  advantage  of  several  hundred  new 
titles,  the  Library  staff  searched  its  neighbours' 
shelves. 

At  the  Providence  Public  Library  many  inter- 
esting titles  were  found  among  the  Updike  family 
pamphlets  and  with  the  books  on  slavery  collected 
by  Caleb  Fiske  Harris.  The  archives  of  the  state 
contain  a  number  of  rare  official  publications  sent 
to  Rhode  Island  by  the  sister  governments.  The 

c  70  3 


THE  INSTITUTION 

State  Law  Library  possesses  a  good  collection  of 
colonial  statute  and  session  laws.  The  Rhode  Is- 
land Historical  Society  has  most  of  the  things  printed 
in  this  state.  Friends  of  the  Providence  Athenaeum 
have  given  it  some  very  valuable  treasures.  The 
University  Library  has  a  large  proportion  of  the 
early  attempts  at  literary  expression  in  this  coun- 
try in  the  Harris  Collection  of  American  Poetry. 
In  the  same  building  are  the  Theron  Metcalf  col- 
lection of  pamphlets,  the  library  of  Spanish  Amer- 
ican books  bequeathed  by  George  Earl  Church, 
the  Rhode  Island  books  collected  by  Sidney  S. 
Rider  which  were  presented  to  the  University  by 
Marsden  J.  Perry,  and  the  Wheaton  Collection  of 
books  on  International  Law  given  by  William  Vail 
Kellen.  Each  of  these,  as  well  as  the  general  li- 
brary shelves,  contains  volumes  which  many  stu- 
dents would  expect  to  find  among  the  Americana 
at  the  John  Carter  Brown  Library.  The  Library  has 
therefore  added  these  to  its  catalogue  and  treats 
them  as  among  its  resources. 

The  policy  of  considering  each  of  the  libraries 
in  Providence  as  part  of  the  resources  of  the  com- 
munity as  a  whole  has  been  developed  by  the  local 
librarians  for  more  than  a  decade.  Each  library 
has  its  own  field.  The  aim  of  those  in  charge  of  the 
neighbouring  institutions  has  been  to  strengthen 

C  71  J 


JOHN  CARTER  BROWN  LIBRARY 

all  the  others  in  their  especial  subjects.  Gifts  of- 
fered to  one  have  been  sent  frequently  to  another, 
where  they  more  properly  belong  and  where  they 
acquire  an  increased  value.  Duplication  of  pur- 
chases has  been  avoided  so  far  as  the  needs  of 
different  groups  of  patrons  would  permit,  and  the 
sum  of  local  resources  correspondingly  increased. 
The  librarians  of  the  city  are  accustomed  to  meet 
at  intervals,  usually  on  the  neutral  ground  of  the 
John  Carter  Brown  Library.  There  the  various 
problems  of  each  are  discussed  and  plans  made  for 
the  future,  over  the  teacups. 

The  John  Carter  Brown  Library  has  gained 
largely  by  this  spirit  of  community  interest.  Sev- 
eral hundred  volumes  have  been  transferred  to  it 
from  the  other  libraries.  Most  of  these  came  from 
places  where  they  were  scarcely  ever  disturbed, 
and  where  there  was  no  opportunity  to  find  out 
whether  they  were  of  especial  value.  On  its  shelves 
they  have  acquired  individuality  and  importance. 
The  old  pamphlet  which  has  the  slightest  intrinsic 
value  by  itself,  gains  immeasurably  when  it  is  put 
alongside  others  on  the  same  subject,  of  the  same 
year  or  from  the  same  place.  The  Library  benefits 
from  every  addition  to  its  numbers,  but  there  is 
as  great  a  gain  to  the  community  to  which  it  gives 
distinction . 

c  72  n 


THE  INSTITUTION 

The  knowledge  of  the  aftual  extent  of  the  col- 
lection and  of  what  is  within  its  immediate  reach 
furnished  a  basis  upon  which  to  plan  for  the  fu- 
ture. In  order  to  do  this  intelligently,  it  is  neces- 
sary to  find  out  where  the  Library  stands  in  the 
field  which  it  claims  to  occupy.  The  borders  of 
that  field  have  been  marked  in  only  a  few  spots. 
Before  its  limits  can  be  found,  three  things  must 
be  determined.  The  first  of  these  is  the  total  num- 
ber of  publications  printed  in  the  western  hemi- 
sphere before  1801 ;  the  second,  the  proportion  of 
these  which  are  now  in  existence;  and  the  third, 
the  number  that  it  will  be  possible  for  the  Library 
to  acquire.  It  is  obvious  that  none  of  these  can  be 
given  exaftly.  As  with  all  statistics,  the  figures 
drawn  from  published  bibliographies  are  decep- 
tive when  turned  into  positive  statements  and  used 
for  comparison  with  one  another.  The  necessary 
explanations  are  more  apt  to  confuse  than  to  illu- 
minate. In  spite  of  these  difficulties,  an  attempt  has 
been  made  to  take  a  preliminary  survey  of  the 
Library's  position.  The  result  will  gain  in  value 
whenever  other  libraries  are  able  to  supply  their 
figures  for  comparison. 

The  only  bibliographical  work  which  tries  to 
cover  the  whole  field  of  the  John  Carter  Brown 
Library  is  "A  Dictionary  of  Books  relating  to 

C  73  j 


JOHN  CARTER  BROWN  LIBRARY 

America/'  undertaken  by  Joseph  Sabin  in  1867. 
The  1 1 6th  part,  which  ends  with  the  alphabetical 
entry  of  Henry  Hollingsworth  Smith,  the  last  that 
has  appeared,  was  published  in  1892.  Most  of  the 
Sabin  titles  are  those  of  nineteenth-century  books, 
however,  so  that  it  is  impossible  to  make  any  use- 
ful deductions  from  the  proportion  of  all  the  en- 
tries which  are  in  the  Library.  A  test  of  its  strength 
may  be  made,  nevertheless,  by  certain  sections. 
One  of  these  contains  the  description  of  editions 
of  Ptolemy's  Geography.  This  was  prepared  with 
great  care  by  Wilberforce  Eames,  who  assumed 
the  editorial  responsibility  for  the  Dictionary  in 
1884.  Of  the  40  titles  and  8  additional  issues  men- 
tioned in  the  notes,  the  Library  possesses  45.  In 
approximate  completeness  the  Ptolemys  come 
nearest  to  rivalling  the  Library's  set  of  the  Rhode 
Island  "schedules"  or  session  laws  from  1747  to 
1800,  which  is  perfect  except  for  two  leaves. 

Two  other  sections  of  Sabin's  Dictionary  were  of 
sufficient  importance  to  be  issued  as  separate  pam- 
phlets. One  contains  the  list  of  editions  of  the  works 
by  the  Spanish  Historian  of  the  Indies,  Antonio  de 
Herrera.  The  Library  has  all  but  5  of  the  23  entries 
under  his  name.  The  other  shows  69  entries  cred- 
ited to  the  great  Apostle  to  the  Indians,  Bartolome 
de  las  Casas.  Of  these  56  are  in  the  Library. 

C  74  J 


THE  INSTITUTION 

Two  French  travellers  whose  writings  have 
received  exhaustive  bibliographical  treatment  are 
Father  Louis  Hennepin  and  the  Baron  Lahontan. 
Minute  descriptions  of  the  peculiarities  of  all  the 
recorded  editions  of  their  works  have  been  pub- 
lished by  Victor  Hugo  Paltsits  of  the  New  York 
Public  Library.  Mr.  Paltsits  found  37  distinct  issues 
of  Hennepin's  publications,  of  which  the  Library 
possesses  all  but  3.  It  has  33  of  the  51  volumes 
described  in  the  pamphlet  on  Lahontan 's  writings. 

The  earliest  publications  which  contain  allusions 
to  the  newly  discovered  western  world  are  among 
the  books  most  sought  by  colleftors.  These  were 
described  by  Henry  Harrisse  in  his  "  Bibliotheca 
Americana  Vetustissima,"  familiarly  known  to  bib- 
liographers as  "B.  A.  V."  since  its  publication  in 
1866.  This  work  lists  307  titles  printed  between 
1493  and  1550,  in  which  there  is  some  reference 
to  the  New  World.  Of  these  the  Library  possesses 
156.  Harrisse  was  able  to  increase  his  number  by 
153  new  titles  when  he  issued  his  volume  of  "Ad- 
ditions" in  1872,  and  of  these  the  Library  has  31. 

Many  of  the  titles  in  Harrisse's  "  B.  A.  V."  are 
described  from  a  more  scholarly  point  of  view  in 
Jose  Toribio  Medina's  "  Biblioteca  Hispano- Amer- 
icana," in  six  folio  volumes,  printed  between  1898 
and  1902.  Sr.  Medina  found  144  works  on  Span- 

c  75  3 


JOHN  CARTER  BROWN  LIBRARY 

ish  America  dated  before  1551,  of  which  the  Li- 
brary has  52.  This  work  is  the  only  comprehen- 
sive bibliography  which  treats  of  books  printed  in 
Europe  that  relate  to  America.  It  is  in  books  of  this 
description  that  the  John  Carter  Brown  Library  has 
always  been  strongest.  This  fa6l  gives  the  printed 
catalogue  of  Mr.  Brown's  collection  its  principal 
permanent  importance.  Sr.  Medina  limited  him- 
self to  works  on  Spanish  America,  including  every- 
thing, on  whatever  subject,  composed  by  persons 
born  in  the  Spanish  colonies.  It  is  therefore  not 
surprising  to  find  that  the  Library's  proportion  of 
Medina's  5905  titles  dated  before  1801  grows  rap- 
idly smaller  after  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  century. 

The  Library  is  strongest  in  European  "Ameri- 
cana/' but  it  has  a  creditable  number  of  books 
printed  in  America.  Sr.  Medina  has  provided  the 
means  of  testing  this  for  the  output  of  the  Spanish- 
American  press.  In  his  more  than  fifty  volumes 
of  bibliographical  publications  he  described  with 
unequalled  thoroughness  everything  that  he  could 
find  that  was  printed  in  the  colonies  before  the  end 
of  the  Spanish  domination  in  1820. 

In  the  city  of  Mexico  printing  began  in  1 539.  Be- 
tween that  date  and  1800,  Medina  lists  941 1  Mexi- 
can imprints.  Of  these  the  Library  possesses  584, 
or  about  six  per  cent.  From  the  neighbouring  city  of 

C  76  H 


THE  INSTITUTION 

Puebla  1449  titles  are  recorded  between  the  years 
1640  and  1800, of  which  the  Library  has  54, nearly 
all  of  these  having  historical  or  linguistic  impor- 
tance. Printing  began  in  South  America,  half  a  cen- 
tury later  than  in  Mexico,  at  Lima  in  1584.  The 
record  of  its  presses  to  the  end  of  the  eighteenth 
century  contains  only  1891  titles.  Of  these  the  Li- 
brary has  231 ,  or  somewhat  more  than  twelve  per 
cent.  In  addition  to  these  it  has  a  score  of  titles  not 
known  to  Sr.  Medina  when  he  published  his  "Im- 
prenta  de  Lima"  in  1904. 

Almost  nothing  has  been  published  about  the 
early  history  of  printing  in  the  West  Indian  Islands, 
with  the  exception  of  Jamaica.  For  that  island, 
Frank  Cundall  of  the  Jamaica  Institute  has  issued 
several  valuable  lists.  In  these  he  mentions  90 
eighteenth-century  titles  printed  at  Kingston  or  at 
St.  Iago  de  la  Vega,  its  predecessor  as  the  seat  of 
government.  Of  these  the  Library  has  16.  Cun- 
dall lists  291  European  books  which  direftly  con- 
cern Jamaica,  published  prior  to  the  nineteenth 
century,  113  of  which  are  in  the  Library. 

Charles  Evans's  "  Chronological  Dictionary  of 
all  Books  Pamphlets  and  Periodical  Publications 
printed  in  the  United  States  of  America  from  1639 
to  1820"  is  the  most  satisfactory  of  all  biblio- 
graphical works  from  the  point  of  view  of  this 

i  77  3 


JOHN  CARTER  BROWN  LIBRARY 

Library.  The  seven  volumes  already  issued  con- 
tain 22,297  titles  dated  before  1790.  Of  these  the 
Library  contains  over  twenty-one  per  cent.  It  is 
thought  that  only  one  other  library,  that  of  the 
American  Antiquarian  Society  at  Worcester,  Mas- 
sachusetts, contains  a  larger  proportion. 

The  future  usefulness  of  the  Library  depends 
largely  upon  its  policy  with  regard  to  the  eighty  per 
cent  of  English-American  imprints  which  it  does 
not  now  possess.  All  of  these  would  be  desirable  ad- 
ditions to  the  collection.  If  this  is  to  be  the  place  to 
which  students  will  apply,  before  going  anywhere 
else,  for  information  about  any  early  printed  book 
in  which  they  hope  to  find  something  about  Amer- 
ica, the  Library  must  strive  to  buy  all  the  books 
of  this  description  which  it  can  afford.  It  must  also 
colleft  all  possible  information  about  the  books 
that  it  cannot  hope  to  secure  in  their  original  form. 
The  accumulation  of  data  of  this  character  will 
for  many  years  occupy  the  time  of  the  Library  staff 
which  is  not  taken  for  answering  the  questions 
and  assisting  the  investigations  of  those  who  wish 
to  make  use  of  the  collection. 

The  intelligent  pursuit  of  the  Library's  desid- 
erata requires  a  precise  knowledge  of  the  whole 
field.  It  is  only  by  making  a  systematic  examina- 
tion of  each  portion,  comparing  the  published  bibli- 

C  78  ] 


THE  INSTITUTION 


ographies  with  what  the  Library  already  possesses, 
that  it  becomes  possible  to  judge  where  the  collec- 
tion is  strong,  where  the  weak  spots  are  that  can 
easily  be  reinforced,  and  where  it  must  be  content 
to  leave  some  rival  in  undisputed  possession  of  the 
leading  position.  This  examination  has  already  be- 
gun. Hildeburn's  "Press  of  Pennsylvania,  1685- 
1784/'  and  his  catalogue  of  "The  Charlemagne 
Tower  Collection  of  American  Colonial  Laws," 
Trumbull's  "Connecticut  Books"  and  Clayton- 
Torrence's  "  Bibliography  of  Colonial  Virginia," 
Hill  and  Collins's  "  Books  printed  at  Newark, New 
Jersey,  1776-1900,"  Nichols's  "Isaiah  Thomas," 
and  the  "Notes  on  the  Almanacs  of  Massachu- 
setts" by  the  same  careful  student,  Seidensticker's 
"  German  Printing  in  America,  1 728-1 830,"  Phil- 
lips's "List  of  Geographical  Atlases,"  Scott's 
"Bibliography  of  the  Darien  Company,"  Nel- 
son's "Controversy  over  the  American  Episco- 
pate," Rodriguez's  "  Bibliotheca  Brasiliense,  1492- 
i822,"Gagnon's  "BibliographieCanadienne,"and 
McLachlan's  "  Fleury  Mesplet,  the  first  printer  at 
Montreal,"  are  titles  which  suggest  the  various 
aspefts  from  which  the  Library's  standing  has 
been  measured. 

The  Library  has  also  started  its  own  survey  of 
the  ground  not  satisfactorily  covered  by  other  bib- 

C  79  ] 


JOHN  CARTER  BROWN  LIBRARY 

liographers.  For  many  reasons  this  began  nearest 
home.  A  check-list  of  Rhode  Island  imprints  dating 
from  1 727  to  the  end  of  the  century  was  compiled 
in  1914.  This  contains  1561  titles,  of  which  1095, 
or  somewhat  over  two-thirds,  are  in  the  library 
of  the  Rhode  Island  Historical  Society,  which  has 
printed  the  list.  The  John  Carter  Brown  Library 
contains  228,  of  which  37  are  not  at  the  Histori- 
cal Society.  Other  libraries  in  Providence  have  84 
additional  titles.  As  68  of  the  entries  are  based  on 
records,  unsupported  by  any  known  copy  of  the 
aftual  publication,  nearly  eighty-two  per  cent  of 
what  has  survived  of  eighteenth-century  Rhode 
Island  printing  is  accessible  in  its  original  form  in 
Providence. 

Of  the  titles  in  the  Rhode  Island  Imprints  list, 
1125  date  from  before  the  year  1790,  the  period 
already  covered  by  Evans's  American  Bibliogra- 
phy. Evans  gives  the  titles  of  809  publications  by 
Newport  or  Providence  printers,  or  about  seventy 
per  cent  of  those  on  the  Library's  list.  This  is  prob- 
ably a  fair  gauge  of  the  number  of  titles  which 
will  be  recorded  as  addenda  to  Evans  as  a  result 
of  further  researches. 

The  photographing  machine  was  a  valuable  ally 
in  the  work  of  preparing  the  Rhode  Island  list.  It 
was  used  for  making  exaft  copies  of  most  of  the 

C  so  ] 


THE  INSTITUTION 

items  which  do  not  belong  to  the  Providence  libra- 
ries. The  compilers  had  these  prints  to  refer  to, 
eliminating  questions  of  possible  error  in  trans- 
scribing,  and  the  Library  secured  a  large  number 
of  facsimiles  for  the  use  of  future  investigators. 
Most  of  the  things  photographed  are  broadsides  or 
pamphlets  consisting  of  only  a  few  pages,  which 
offer  no  difficulties  in  copying  or  in  filing  for 
preservation. 

The  copying  of  the  early  Rhode  Island  newspa- 
pers was  a  more  serious  problem.  The  value  of  the 
papers  to  students  of  history  and  of  bibliography 
is  great.  They  exist  in  widely  scattered  deposi- 
tories, none  of  which  contain  all  the  issues  neces- 
sary to  make  a  complete  file  of  any  single  paper. 
The  size  of  page  and  bulk  of  volumes  make  copy- 
ing expensive,  and  when  the  copies  are  made,  the 
keeping  of  them  causes  librarians  many  perplex- 
ities. So  long  as  investigators  want  to  see  them, 
however,  the  business  of  the  Library  is  to  supply 
them. 

The  Library's  immediate  interest  in  Rhode  Is- 
land newspapers  led  it  to  try  to  answer  some  of 
the  questions  which  confront  every  library  where 
historical  research  is  carried  on.  The  photostat 
was  put  to  the  test  of  reproducing  the  extant  file 
for  the  first  eighteen  years  of  "  The  Newport  Mer- 

t  81  3 


JOHN  CARTER  BROWN  LIBRARY 

cury."  Between  its  start  in  1758  and  the  early 
winter  of  1776,  when  the  arrival  of  British  troops 
forced  the  editor  to  suspend  publication,  about  a 
thousand  issues  of  this  paper  appeared.  Of  these, 
701  have  been  found, in  various  collections.  Nearly 
all  of  these  have  been  photographed,  and  prints  of 
the  complete  set  are  offered  to  students  or  to  libra- 
ries at  approximate  cost.  The  experiment  seems  to 
have  been  successful,  and  it  is  probable  that,  with 
the  cooperation  of  other  institutions,  several  files 
of  colonial  papers,  now  praftically  inaccessible  to 
students,  will  be  reproduced. 

During  its  first  decade  as  a  part  of  Brown  Uni- 
versity, 1 1,571  titles,  somewhat  over  one  third  of 
its  total  number,  were  added  to  the  Library.  The 
endowment  fund  yielded  $207,684. 73  during  this 
period.  Of  this  income,  the  Committee  of  Manage- 
ment placed  $10,671.05  with  the  invested  funds, 
and  spent  $9351-95  on  improvements  to  the  build- 
ing and  its  equipment,  and  $841.24  on  repairs, 
which  were  largely  of  a  permanent  character.  The 
administrative  expenses  amounted  to  $65,948.71 
for  salaries  and  assistance,  $8452.31  for  the  build- 
ing, and  $5557-66  for  library  supplies.  Printing 
cost  $2817.98.  The  amount  spent  for  books  was 

$104,630.53. 

More  detailed  figures  and  a  description  of  some 

C  82  ^ 


THE  INSTITUTION 

of  the  purchases  are  given  in  the  reports  which  the 
Committee  has  made  at  the  meeting  of  the  Corpo- 
ration of  the  University  held  in  June  of  each  year. 
These  reports  for  the  years  1906  to  1910  were 
printed  as  a  part  of  the  Annual  Report  of  the  Presi- 
dent of  the  University.  Beginning  with  the  year 
191 1  they  have  been  issued  in  pamphlet  form  by 
the  Library. 


C  83  1 


THE  PUBLICATIONS 


THE  list  of  Rhode  Island  Imprints  is  one  of 
several  contributions  which  the  Library  has 
made  toward  the  publication  of  a  catalogue  of  its 
own  collections.  A  complete  printed  catalogue 
would  be  highly  desirable,  but  the  rapid  growth 
of  the  collection  during  the  past  decade,  and  uncer- 
tainty regarding  the  best  form  in  which  to  prepare 
it,  as  well  as  the  cost,  have  prevented  the  start  of 
this  undertaking.  The  ideal  catalogue  would  follow 
closely  the  plan  of  the  volumes  issued  by  Mr.  Bart- 
lett.  Such  a  catalogue,  accurately  compiled  with 
adequate  notes,  would  be  a  contribution  to  histori- 
cal scholarship  of  the  greatest  value.  John  Nicho- 
las Brown  realized  this,  and  it  had  a  large  place 
in  his  plans  for  the  future  work  of  the  Library.  It 
will  be  several  years  before  his  ideal  can  be  accom- 
plished. In  the  meantime,  the  Library  expefts  to 
issue,  as  occasion  warrants,  check -lists  of  titles  and 
bibliographies  of  subjects,  which  will  inform  stu- 
dents of  its  resources. 

Three  "title  a  line''  lists  were  printed  in  1908. 
These  named  the  Library's"  Booksprinted  in  Lima, 
1585-1800,"  "Books  printed  in  South  America 
elsewhere  than  at  Lima  before  1 801  ■".  and  "  Books 
printed  in  Lima  and  elsewhere  in  South  America 

C  85  1 


JOHN  CARTER  BROWN  LIBRARY 

after  1800."  Partly  as  a  result  of  the  publication  of 
these  lists,  the  number  of  titles  for  a  new  edition 
of  the  first  two  was  nearly  doubled  a  few  months 
later  by  the  acquisition  of  the  seventeenth  and 
eighteenth  century  books  from  the  library  of  Don 
Luis  Montt  of  Santiago  de  Chile.  A  lucky  find  soon 
afterwards  gave  the  Library  a  piece  of  Lima  print- 
ing that  is  older  than  the  work  which  has  long 
ranked  as  the  earliest  South  American  imprint. This 
latter  important "  First "  was  still  lacking  when  this 
history  of  the  Library  began  to  be  written,  but  it 
has  arrived  at  last,  in  October,  1914. 

"  A  List  of  Books  printed  in  the  Fifteenth  Cen- 
tury in  the  John  Carter  Brown  Library  and  the 
General  Library  of  Brown  University/'  printed  at 
the  Clarendon  Press, Oxford,  in  1910,  is  the  begin- 
ning of  a  short-title  catalogue  of  the  Library.  This 
was  appended  to  the  catalogue  of  early  printed 
books  collected  by  Rush  C.Hawkins,  which  are  ex- 
hibited at  the  Annmary  Brown  Memorial  in  Provi- 
dence. It  was  also  published  separately,  with  two 
plates  of  the  Library's  Richenbach  binding  dated 
1470.  This  list  contains  sixty-six  titles.  Twenty- 
four  additional  entries  have  already  been  made  in 
the  Library  copy  for  a  new  edition. 

The  short-title  lists,  of  which  the  Rhode  Island 
Imprints  is  another  example,  are  intended  to  make 

C  86  J 


THE  PUBLICATIONS 

known  the  contents  of  the  Library.  Similar  lists 
were  included  in  the  Annual  Reports  of  the  Li- 
brary for  June,  1912,  and  June,  1913.  The  first 
described  some  "Printed  Business  Papers,  1766- 
1788/' Among  these  were  a  number  of  circular 
letters  sent  out  by  European  commission  houses 
asking  for  the  resumption  of  trade  at  the  close  of 
the  American  Revolution.  The  manuscript  maps 
and  atlases  were  listed  in  the  Report  for  1913. 

The  short-title  is  merely  suggestive.  A  very  dif- 
ferent sort  of  cataloguing  aims  to  provide  every- 
thing that  a  student  is  likely  to  want  to  know  about 
each  individual  volume.  The  Library  published  this 
information  about  one  of  its  titles  in  1 907,  as  its  con- 
tribution to  the  celebration  of  the  anniversary  of  the 
settlement  at  Jamestown  in  Virginia.  A  handsome 
folio  volume  was  printed  describing  "Three  Procla- 
mations concerning  the  Lottery  for  Virginia,  161 3- 
1621 Two  of  these  proclamations  which  did  not 
belong  to  the  Library  were  reproduced  in  full-size 
facsimile  from  the  originals  in  the  collection  of  the 
Society  of  Antiquaries  at  London.  These  three  were 
the  only  Virginia  Lottery  broadsides  that  were  then 
known  to  be  in  existence.  A  fourth  has  recently 
been  secured  by  the  Library,  and  a  facsimile  of  this 
will  be  added  to  the  volume. 

A  companion  to  the  Virginia  volume  was  issued 

C  87  3 


JOHN  CARTER  BROWN  LIBRARY 

in  1911,  containing  "Three  Maps,  with  outline 
sketches  reproduced  in  facsimile  from  the  origi- 
nal manuscript  drawn  by  Pedro  Font,  Chaplain 
and  Cartographer  to  the  Expedition  led  by  Juan 
Bautista  de  Ansa  which  made  the  overland  jour- 
ney from  Northern  Mexico  to  the  California  Coast 
during  the  winter  of  1775-1 776."  The  introduc- 
tion to  this  publication  was  contributed  by  the  his- 
torian of  California,  Irving  Berdine  Richman. 

A  single  entry  in  the  South  American  lists  of 
1908  was  made  the  subject  of  a  separate  publica- 
tion, issued  at  the  same  time.  This  contained  a  fac- 
simile of  the  first  issue  of  the  "Gazeta  de  Lima/' 
and  a  description  of  the  Library's  file  of  that  paper, 
which  extends  from  1744  to  1763.  All  the  refer- 
ences to  other  publications,  to  the  distribution  of 
news,  and  to  routes  of  communication  with  Europe 
were  reprinted. 

These  facsimile  publications  continue  a  policy 
established  by  John  Carter  Brown.  His  first  re- 
print had  a  timely  interest.  When  he  was  notified 
that  he  was  to  be  elected  President  of  the  New 
England  Emigrant  Aid  Society,  Mr.  Brown  de- 
clined the  honour.  Almost  immediately  afterwards 
came  the  news  of  the  raid  on  Harper's  Ferry,  and 
he  recalled  his  declination,  with  the  remark  that 
"This  is  no  time  for  a  man  with  the  name  of  John 

C  88  1 


THE  PUBLICATIONS 

Brown  to  draw  back."  Shortly  afterward  he  had  a 
copy  made  of  a  tra6l  written  by  St.  George  Tucker, 
Judge  of  the  Superior  Court  of  Virginia,  and  printed 
in  1 796  with  the  title, "  A  Dissertation  on  Slavery: 
with  a  proposal  for  the  gradual  abolition  of  it. "  This 
was  reprinted  in  New  York, but  events  had  already 
passed  beyond  the  reach  of  eighteenth-century 
arguments. 

In  April,  1867,  Mr.  Brown  issued  a  type-fac- 
simile of  John  Smith's  "New  England's  Trials," 
of  1622.  The  next  year  he  sent  to  his  book-loving 
friends  at  Christmas  a  copy  of  Dionyse  Settle's  "A 
True  Reporte  of  the  laste  voyage  into  the  West  and 
Northwest  regions,  &c,  1577-  worthily  atchieved 
by  Capteine  Frobisher."  Fifty  copies  of  this  were 
reprinted  from  the  tiny  original,  which  he  had  se- 
cured in  the  autumn  of  1868.  In  1874,  twenty-five 
copies  were  printed  from  facsimile  plates  of  the 
"Dutch  Vespuccius." 

The  John  Carter  Brown  Library  has  been  con- 
cerned in  a  number  of  publications,  in  addition  to 
those  issued  by  Mr.  Brown  or  with  the  Library 
imprint.  The  Narragansett  Club  of  Providence, 
which  existed  from  1867  to  1874  for  the  purpose 
of  reprinting  the  writings  of  Roger  Williams,  de- 
pended largely  upon  Mr.  Brown's  friendly  assist- 
ance. The  moving  spirit  in  that  club,  George  Tay- 

[  89  3 


JOHN  CARTER  BROWN  LIBRARY 

lor  Paine,  was  responsible  for  the  organization  of 
the  Club  for  Colonial  Reprints.  This  club  began 
its  career  in  1903  by  issuing  a  facsimile  from  the 
Library  copy  of  "Major  Butler's  Fourth  Paper" 
of  1652,  edited  by  Clarence  Saunders  Brigham. 
This  was  the  only  one  of  Roger  Williams's  pub- 
lications that  had  not  been  reprinted  since  its 
original  appearance.  The  club's  fifth  publication 
contained  Richard  Fry's  "Scheme  for  a  Paper 
Currency"  of  1739-  This  was  reprinted  from  the 
Library  copy,  which,  although  imperfeft,  was  the 
only  one  known  to  the  editor,  Andrew  McFarland 
Davis.  It  has  since  been  replaced  by  a  perfecl 
copy. 

Other  reprints  to  which  the  Library  has  contrib- 
uted are  the  "News  from  New-England,"  1676, 
issued  by  Samuel  G.  Drake  in  1850  and  by  W. 
Elliott  Woodward  in  1865;  "A  Letter  from  Doc- 
tor More,"  1687, by  the  Historical  Society  of  Penn- 
sylvania in  1881;  "Antinomians  and  Familists," 
1 644, by  the  Prince  Society  in  1 894;  Wyeth's  "An- 
swer to  Dr.  Bray,"  1 700,  by  the  Maryland  Histori- 
cal Society  in  1901 ;  "The  Swamp  Fight  Traft" 
of  1676,  by  the  Rhode  Island  Society  of  Colonial 
Wars  in  1912;  and  "The  Puritan's  Farewell  to 
England,  April  7, 1630,"  which  was  the  souvenir 
of  the  New  England  Society  of  New  York  upon 

c  90  n 


THE  PUBLICATIONS 

the  two  hundred  and  ninety-second  anniversary 
of  Forefathers  Day. 

The  Library  has  a  more  direct  responsibility  for 
a  facsimile  reprint  of  the  first  Rhode  Island  Alma- 
nack, printed  at  Newport  for  the  year  1728.  This 
was  reproduced  in  1911  from  the  only  recorded 
copy,  which  belongs  to  the  Library  of  Congress.  A 
description  of  the  early  "  Brown  University  Broad- 
sides" was  prepared  at  the  Library,  which  con- 
tributed to  this  pamphlet  a  facsimile  of  a  circular 
announcement  of  1 790  that  is  not  in  the  University 
archives. 


c  91 3 


THE  WORK  OF  THE  LIBRARY 

THE  regular  work  of  the  Library  staff  includes 
the  editing  of  facsimile  reprints  and  the  prep- 
aration of  bibliographical  lists  of  books  on  such  sub- 
jects as  the  Peace  of  1 763.  This  work  is  frequently 
interrupted  by  calls  from  investigators  who  desire 
to  examine  volumes  that  they  have  been  unable 
to  consult  elsewhere.  These  visitors  come  on  most 
divergent  quests.  The  linguistic  peculiarities  of  an 
edition  of  Vespuccius'  Letters  provided  a  college 
professor  with  the  material  for  a  communication 
to  the  "  Jahrbuch  des  Vereins  fiir  niederdeutsche 
Sprachforschung"  for  1907.  One  of  his  colleagues 
sought  a  treatise  on  the  cultivation  of  hemp  pub- 
lished in  1 766.  Curiosity  regarding  the  Indian  trade 
routes  from  the  Maine  coast  to  Canada  reflected 
a  summer's  holiday,  and  a  winter's  sojourn  in  the 
West  Indies  led  to  a  prolonged  inquiry  into  the 
vicissitudes  of  the  Jamaica  sugar  trade  in  the  eight- 
eenth century.  Notes  were  taken  by  one  student 
on  the  watermarks  in  the  paper  on  which  pam- 
phlets were  printed  contemporaneous  with  Shake- 
speare. The  year's  work  of  another  bore  fruit  in  a 
volume  on  "  L'Exotisme  Americain  dans  la  Litera- 
ture Francaise  au  XVI6  Siecle." 

The  pleasure  of  assisting  personal  researches  in 
I  93  ^ 


JOHN  CARTER  BROWN  LIBRARY 

the  Library  is  supplemented  by  that  of  answering 
the  questions  that  come  by  post.  One  correspond- 
ent is  tracing  the  changes  in  the  meaning  of  words 
through  four  centuries,  and  another,  with  the  same 
natural  bent,is  reconstructing  the  Maya  language. 
Both  ask  for  data  found  on  the  Library  shelves. 
From  Santiago  de  Chile  came  a  request  for  a  book 
which  had  been  sought  in  vain  elsewhere  since 
its  title  was  noticed  in  a  Paris  bookseller's  cata- 
logue of  1862.  The  Charleston  earthquake,  the 
visit  of  Halley's  comet,  and  the  siege  of  Namur 
each.started  requests  for  accounts  of  historical  ante- 
cedents which  the  Library  was  able  to  answer. 

The  business  of  the  Library  is  to  promote  schol- 
arship. It  assists  investigators  engaged  upon  seri- 
ous work  in  every  way  it  can.  Few  of  those  who 
would  like  to  use  its  resources  can  take  time  and 
money  to  visit  Providence.  The  questions  which 
can  be  answered  in  this  Library  and  nowhere 
else  are  not  many,  and  rarely  are  they  fundamen- 
tal to  the  prosecution  of  a  piece  of  work.  These, 
however,  and  many  others  that  can  be  answered 
here  more  readily  than  elsewhere,  are  usually  the 
questions  which  distinguish  the  slipshod  from  the 
creditable  production.  The  aim  of  the  Library  is  to 
supply  every  earnest  student,  wherever  he  may 
be,  with  any  information  in  its  possession  which  is 

C  94  ] 


THE  WORK  OF  THE  LIBRARY 

beyond  his  immediate  reach.  In  return  it  expefts 
that  the  information  it  furnishes  will  be  used  in  ac- 
cordance with  the  highest  standards  of  scholarship. 

The  fostering  of  historical  studies  has  not  been 
found  inconsistent  with  the  cultivation  of  a  friendly 
interest  among  those  who  enter  the  Library  be- 
cause it  is  a  pleasant  place  to  visit.  The  building 
stands  on  the  University  Campus,  open  to  visitors 
every  week  day  from  nine  to  five  o'clock.  It  offers 
strangers  passing  by  a  comfortable  seat  to  rest  in, 
and  something  to  look  at  in  the  exhibition  cases. 
The  books,  autographs,  and  engravings  which  are 
shown  are  usually  sele6led  to  illustrate  a  subject 
of  interest  at  the  moment  to  the  Library  or  to  the 
public. 

The  interests  of  the  Library  are  usually  con- 
cerned with  matters  remote  from  contemporary 
life.  Business  and  professional  men,  and  members 
of  the  academic  circle,  ordinarily  know  little  about 
the  things  that  make  the  work  of  the  Library  staff 
enjoyable.  None  the  less  these  are  things  that  most 
well-informed  persons  are  very  glad  to  hear  about. 
It  has  therefore  become  a  part  of  the  regular  win- 
ter programme  to  invite  the  friends  of  the  Library 
who  are  occupied  with  the  more  aftive  life  of  the 
city  to  make  it  a  social  visit.  When  a  pamphlet 
advertising  an  early  experiment  in  woollen  manu- 

t  95  3 


JOHN  CARTER  BROWN  LIBRARY 

fa6ture,  or  some  old  fire  insurance  regulations,  or 
a  fifteenth-century  illuminated  initial  was  acquired, 
two  or  three  people  for  whom  it  had  an  especial 
interest  were  asked  to  look  at  it  at  tea  time. 

Larger  groups  have  assembled  in  response  to 
other  invitations.  The  local  clergy  came  to  look 
at  Bibles  and  Prayer  Books.  School-children  make 
an  annual  pilgrimage  to  see  the  signatures  writ- 
ten by  Paul  Revere,  Peregrine  White,  and  Myan- 
tonomey.  The  members  of  the  Club  of  Odd  Vol- 
umes were  permitted  to  handle  Richard  Mather's 
copy  of  the  Bay  Psalm  Book.  The  Society  of  Print- 
ers compared  the  work  of  Plantin  and  Elzevir, 
Baskerville  and  Whittingham. 

Formal  invitations  are  issued  from  time  to  time 
for  a  private  view  of  the  books  or  manuscripts 
which  are  about  to  be  placed  on  public  exhibition. 
On  these  occasions  a  score  or  two  of  men  gather 
around  the  long  table  to  hear  about  the  Library's 
latest  acquisition  or  its  newest  discovery.  On  one 
evening  a  neighbouring  collector  brought  his  set 
of  the  Signers  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence 
for  comparison  with  one  that  had  recently  been 
given  to  the  Library.  On  another  the  New  York 
architect  of  a  local  skyscraper  told  how  the  me- 
tropolis had  evolved  from  the  Dutch  trading-post 
portrayed  in  the  engravings  printed  in  1 65 1 .  On  the 

1 96  ] 


THE  WORK  OF  THE  LIBRARY 

one  hundred  and  fiftieth  anniversary  of  the  appear- 
ance of  the  first  newspaper  printed  in  Providence, 
some  of  the  men  who  contribute  to  its  daily  con- 
tinuance were  keenly  interested  in  seeing  the 
stages  of  its  early  development. 

These  social  occasions  are  very  pleasant,  and 
they  benefit  the  Library  in  many  ways.  The  most 
important  advantage  is  that  they  put  the  institu- 
tion, which  is  mediaeval  in  its  contents  and  renais- 
sance in  its  purpose,  in  contafh  with  the  aftive 
men  of  every-day  affairs.  The  assurance  that  these 
men  understand  what  the  Library  is  doing,  and 
approve  of  it,  is  the  strongest  safeguard  against 
temptations  to  depart  from  its  ideals. 

The  aim  of  the  John  Carter  Brown  Library  is 
to  answer  every  question  asked  of  it  concerning 
anything  printed  before  1801,  which  in  any  way 
relates  to  America.  Only  as  it  approaches  to  this 
ideal  can  it  justify  its  permanent  independent  ex- 
istence. Within  this  field,  the  Library  means  to 
be  preeminent. 


